On June 20, a year and one week after it was sworn in, Israel’s 36th government ended with a press conference. Embattled Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, by now the head of a broken and divided Yamina (“Rightwards”) party, announced that he would be stepping down as PM. He further announced that his coalition partner and current Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, the chairman of the Yesh Atid (“There is a future”) party, would become Israel’s interim PM until an election is held.
Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu was trying to avert this outcome by attempting to build an alternative majority to support his own leadership without an election but, at press time, he looked unlikely to succeed.
In any case, many Israeli analysts and politicians are now referring to the outgoing eight-party ruling coalition as an “experiment” which failed.
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