After 12 years of uninterrupted rule, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ousted by a vote of confidence from Parliament in a motley coalition led by his former ally Naftali Bennett.
The geopolitologist Frédéric Encel clarifies the stakes of this political earthquake at the microphone of Europe 1.
INTERVIEW
Israel opens a new page in its history.
Parliament elected centrist Mickey Levy as the new Knesset speaker and endorsed the Social Change Coalition and a government that will unite the opposition parties.
This marks the end of the Netanyahu era after twelve years in power, replaced by Naftali Bennett of the right-wing Yamina party.
For Frédéric Encel, professor at Sciences Po and specialist in the region, if it is "revolutionary" that a coalition was formed against the Prime Minister, it could be too heterogeneous to initiate real progress on hot issues, like the Palestinian question.
Who forms this coalition?
"It is the morning of change", wrote on Sunday morning the centrist Yair Lapid on the networks who presented this coalition of eight parties: two from the left, two from the center, three from the right and an Arab formation.
On Sunday evening, Naftali Bennett was chosen as Prime Minister while centrist Mickey Levy was elected as the new Speaker of Parliament.
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A "motley, very baroque" coalition, considers Frédéric Encel.
For the professor at Sciences Po, "what is revolutionary is that this coalition has a totally new common denominator, which is the ousting of a personality, in this case of an outgoing Prime Minister".
“You have had heterogeneous coalitions since the creation of the country in 1948,” he recalls.
"And I add that since the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the fragmentation, of the atomization of Israeli political life, it is basically something relatively common", but this relative absence of common demands is unpublished.
Thus, for Frédéric Encel, this government will probably "deal with social, budget, roads, investments, to a certain extent diplomacy, but certainly not the Israeli-Palestinian issue", because their positions diverge too much.
What future for Netyanahou?
"It is our destiny to be in the opposition and we will know it with our heads held high. We will bring down this bad government and we will be back to run the country our way," Netanyahu told the Knesset.
In fact, as Frédéric Encel explains, "he immediately returns to the opposition, practically this evening".
Indeed, he recalls, "the Netanyahu bloc: the Likud plus the ultra-Orthodox parties still represents 59 deputies out of 120", ie two deputies less than the absolute majority.
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However, once his post has left, "he will no longer benefit from the immunity of Prime Minister and consequently, he will have to explain himself and answer for three cases, in particular that of corruption".
Can this change the Palestinian situation?
"On the Israeli side, we do not have much to expect in this area, for a very simple reason: it is too much of a motley coalition. There are too many differences between the eight parties that make up this coalition," said the professor at Sciences Po.
The Hamas spokesman explained that "No matter what form the Israeli government takes, it does not change the nature of our relationship with it, because it remains a colonizing and occupying power that we must resist. " For Frédéric Encel, this is not surprising because "Hamas has always played the worst policy, including against the legal and legitimate Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas".