Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett is the new Prime Minister of Israel.
Sixty of the total of 120 MPs voted for the new government with an extremely narrow majority, 59 against, and one member abstained.
When Bennett was sworn in, Netanyahu was about to leave the plenary session, but turned back to shake hands with his successor and briefly take the place of opposition leader.
It also appears that there will not be a public handover ceremony on Monday.
If Netanyahu has his way, he'll be back soon anyway.
Jochen Stahnke
Political correspondent for Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan based in Tel Aviv.
Follow I follow
The meeting in the Knesset before the swearing-in of the new government shortly before on Sunday had little of a dignified handover. Bennett's ten-minute speech before the vote of confidence on the new prime minister became a gauntlet punctuated by heckling. MEPs from Likud and the ultra-orthodox lists spoke of “fraud”, “shame” and “lies”, and several of them were expelled from the room. And Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leaving office after twelve consecutive years as head of government, did not take time to wish his successor Bennett, the thirteenth Prime Minister of Israel, any good wishes.
Instead, Netanyahu went on a confrontation for the last time in office. The Iranians would look forward to Bennett, he said. Because Bennett doesn't have what it takes to stand up against the United States if it has to. Netanyahu compared US President Joe Biden's efforts to secure a new nuclear deal with Iran to “Franklin Delano Roosevelt's failure to bomb trains and gas chambers at the height of the Holocaust, which could have saved our people”. In positive terms, someone who wants to keep fighting sounds like that. Seen negatively, the American-Israeli relationship of maneuvering mass is also unconscionable to him.
Even before the confidence vote in the Knesset, Netanyahu announced his return to office.
Every day in the opposition he would “fight to overthrow this dangerous left government,” he shouted.
And that will "happen faster than you think".
Lapid refrains from speaking
On the one hand, it sounded like a threat. The 71-year-old Netanyahu, accused of corruption, will continue to lead the largest party in the Knesset, the Likud, for the time being. On the other hand, this threat could also hold together the disparate eight-party coalition under Bennett and Jair Lapid, who alternates with him. Lapid is the driving force behind the new coalition. He decided not to speak because, as he said, in front of his 86-year-old mother in the plenary session, he was ashamed of Netanyahu and how the day in the Knesset had passed.
The eight parties brought together by Lapid include the right, centrists and left-wing liberals as well as, for the first time, an Islamic conservative party.
They are united by their aversion to Netanyahu and his divisive style of leadership, which has failed to form its own government in the past two years despite four parliamentary elections.
But some of the new coalition members are ideologically close to him.
Because the new government under Bennett is peppered with people who until recently had not only been to the Likud themselves, but half a dozen of whom also worked directly for Netanyahu, for example as office managers, communications directors or political advisors.
The parties, which the coalition agreement ascribes to the bloc of the previous opposition leader Jair Lapid, in some cases have completely different ideas about the settlement policy in the West Bank or how far the powers of the Supreme Court extend.
Both Bennett and Lapid have each agreed a right of veto over government decisions.
Hardly anyone expects groundbreaking strategic changes in Israel at first.
First minister of Arab origin in Israel
Historically, however, is the appointment of Esawi Frej as Israel's first Arab-born minister: Frej belongs to the left-liberal Meretz party and takes over the Ministry for Regional Cooperation. And with the Raam party, four members of an Arab-Islamist list also join the government. Bennett spoke of a "new chapter" in Israel's relations with its Arab-Palestinian citizens. He expressly thanked Netanyahu for bringing about this alliance. Because it was first the outgoing head of government who made the Raam chairman Mansour Abbas an offer for political cooperation in the coalition negotiations. Thus, the Likud cannot credibly criticize the Bennett and Abbas coalition.
And the new coalitionists have copied something else from Netanyahu. The coalition partners are adopting the basic principle of rotation that Netanyahu first introduced last year for his brief government with the "alternating prime minister" Benny Gantz. According to the new coalition agreement, Bennett will now rule for two years and in August 2023 will be replaced as Prime Minister by Jair Lapid, who will initially become Foreign Minister. The rotation also extends deep into the coalition of 28 ministers. For example, the leader of the right-wing party Tikwa Hadasha, Gideon Saar, will become minister of justice until Lapid becomes head of government, after which Saar will take over the office of foreign minister. Netanyahu is likely to try hard to prevent it from happening.