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After months of attacking each other and not speaking, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his nemesis, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, will meet on Thursday morning at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem. Netanyahu repeatedly told Likud leaders that there is no point in speaking to Liberman, because the Yisrael Beytenu leader is determined to end the prime minister's political career. But after Blue and White leader Benny Gantz canceled a meeting with Netanyahu, he called Liberman on Wednesday evening. "There is no point in wasting the country's time," Netanyahu told Liberman. "We will meet and see if it is...

TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and personal future hangs in the balance this week, as a pretrial hearing weighing whether to indict him on corruption charges kicked off. Following the four-day hearing which began Wednesday, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will decide whether to indict Israel’s longest serving prime minister on fraud and bribery charges in three corruption cases. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and has said he is the victim of a politically orchestrated “witch-hunt” by the media and the left. The start of the hearing came after talks to form a unity government, following last month's...

Netanyahu "will make a last effort to realise the possibility of forming a government at this stage, before returning the mandate to the president," Likud said in a statement. It called the latest round of negotiations a "big disappointment Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (right) and Benny Gantz (left). Pic/AFP Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz traded blame Sunday over the failure so far of efforts to reach a unity government deal following deadlocked elections. A new round of negotiations between Netanyahu's right-wing Likud and Gantz's centrist Blue and White broke down Sunday and the...

The polls have closed in Austria's special election called after a video sting operation against the anti-mass immigration Freedom Party. The Freedom Party is still standing in spite of the situation, but with a reduced share of the vote..... The talks to form a new government continued in Israel Sunday..... As Israel moved into the Rash Hashanah New Year holiday, details of the upcoming pre-indictment hearing involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out. The evidence review hearing will be spread out over two weeks and start on Wednesday...... From Saudi Arabia news of the murder of a bodyguard of King...

We start with the story of the political drama in Washington. Three House committees controlled by Democrats issuing a subpoena aimed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo..... Also word coming out Friday night of the resignation of Kurt Volker, US Special Envoy for Ukraine. Volker a longtime inside the beltway figure and Executive Director of the McCain Institute..... Brexit deal talks resuming again as we go into the weekend..... The Greater London Authority referring Prime Minister Boris Johnson to police...... Police in Nigeria say they have freed more than 300 students from an Islamic school where they were being abused........

In the aftermath of last week’s inconclusive elections, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government. Netanyahu has until October 24 to do so. Rivlin declared that Netanyahu, the current prime minister, has the best chance to form a government. I think Rivlin is correct that Netanyahu has a better chance of doing so than his main opponent, Benny Gantz, who specializes in declaring victory but not in achieveing it. But that doesn’t mean Netanyahu will succeed. He couldn’t accomplish this task after the April elections in which his party fared better than it did last...

The statement was given after an impromptu meeting with Liberman ahead of Rivlin-brokered talks with Netanyahu Blue & White leader Benny Gantz may be ready to concede his party's position against joining a government with incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces possible indictment in a number of corruption cases. "We'll see what happens," Gantz told i24NEWS when asked if he would form a unity government with incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of their meeting with President Reuven Rivlin Tuesday night. The statement was given following an unannounced meeting between Gantz and Yisrael Beitenu's Avigdor Liberman in Jaffa. Meanwhile,...

WASHINGTON — The results of Tuesday’s election left U.S. followers of Israeli politics in a state of confusion, with Israel’s political future seemingly harder to predict than ever. While it is clear to everyone in Washington that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost the election, it is much less clear who actually won it. Also unclear: Whether Israel will have a government in the next few months or if another election will have to take place in the winter. With 98 percent of the votes counted on Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu had almost certainly failed in both of his election objectives. First,...

Center-left candidate Benny Gantz declares victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli elections, and is rejecting the prime minister’s call for negotiations over leading the government. Gantz issued a statement Thursday saying, “I am interested in and intend to form a broad and liberal unity government under my leadership.” He also said, “the process of building a government has begun, and we will not be dictated to.” This comes after Netanyahu offered to build a broad coalition government with Gantz amid a tight election. Netanyahu proposed a rotating premiership among the two leaders. “The people chose unity, the people want...

With political machinations and intrigues in full swing following Tuesday’s election, both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz have said they want a national unity government. Netanyahu,however, said that he wants such a government to include his ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist allies, which Gantz and his party oppose. Support for a national unity government without the ultra-Orthodox parties is actually widespread, with some two-thirds of the Jewish Israeli public backing such a coalition, including half of all Likud voters.

According to Channel 13, 97.6% of the votes from Tuesday's elections have already been counted, Blue and White stands at 33 seats and Likud at 31 seats, with Blue and White leading by a narrow margin. It is important to note that these are still not the final results. Overnight, the committee was counting the near quarter of a million soldiers' votes cast by Israeli soldiers. The Central Election Committee (CEC) has been updating its website since the close of the polls at 10 p.m. on Tuesday. The last update was at 10:40 a.m. on Thursday: 4,354,991 votes had been...

How is 56 greater than 60? Call it Netanyahu’s new math. “After we established the right-wing bloc, there are only two options,” Netanyahu said. “Either a government led by me, or a dangerous government leaning on Arab parties.” Netanyahu’s only chance to remain prime minister is by making sure that his potential coalition partners don’t start wandering over to Blue and White’s side. The way to make sure they don’t do that is to promise he will stay with them and not follow what seems like the more obvious path to a coalition, to reach across the aisle himself.

Right-wing factions convened at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon, deciding to establish a "right-wing bloc" headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, that will work for the establishment of the next government. It was decided to form a joint coalition negotiations team for all factions in the bloc. In addition to Netanyahu, the meeting saw the participation of Minister Yariv Levin and faction heads: Yaakov Litzman, Moshe Gafni, Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, and Bezalel Smotrich. Minister Aryeh Deri met with Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this morning, as he was unable to attend the meeting due to the memorial ceremony...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan are tied but neither can secure a ruling majority, with 92 percent of the votes in Israel's Tuesday election counted, according to a source in Israel's Central Elections Committee. (Who is Benny Gantz? Read the full profile) >> The election is here. Subscribe now - save 30% According to the partial results, Likud and Kahol Lavan won each 32 out of 120 Knesset seats. Netanyahu's bloc, comprised of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, currently stands at 56 seats. The center-left bloc, excluding Arab parties, has 43 seats. Avigdor Lieberman, whose...

The Central Elections Committee issued an injunction tonight (Sunday) against the left-wing NGO Zazim‘s initiative to bus 15,000 Arab voters to voting booths on election day, ruling that the initiative is in violation of the election laws. Zazim (movement) is an NGO that is backed by the New Israel Fund (NIF) which is backed by billionaire currency manipulator George Soros. The injunction came following a petition submitted by the Likud arguing that Zazim, which is heavily funded by the US-based New Israel Fund, is violating the election the laws. In 2017, the Knesset passed the “V15” law aimed at preventing...

The prime minister says media giant folds to Left pressure, and repeated his previous statements that the media is falsely reporting that large numbers of right-wing voters are casting their votes. BY JERUSALEM POST STAFF SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 19:53   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed social media giant Facebook for closing his chat bot on Tuesday, as he was using it to ask users whom are they voting for. Netanyahu repeated his previous statements that the media is falsely reporting that large numbers of Right-wing voters are casting their votes.  "This is a spin of a spin," he shouted on social media,...

The last one, held in April, looked like a victory for Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party. But when Netanyahu failed to get enough support from smaller parties to form a government, he was forced to call new elections. So here we are. The polling for the new election is too close to call. Likud is locked in a tight race with the centrist Blue and White party, which is leading the opposition. The ultimate outcome depends on a lot of things that are really hard to predict, ranging from minor party vote share to post-election parliamentary haggling.

The District Court of the Hague will hold a hearing on Tuesday about whether a war crimes case against Benny Gantz is admissible relating to his command decisions during the 2014 Gaza War. Israeli soldiers and commanders may also be on the hot seat at The Hague before the International Criminal Court, but Tuesday’s hearing, which also happens to be Election Day, is a local Dutch court proceeding that is unrelated to that. In fact, the ICC preliminary probe of Israel’s conduct of the 2014 war is moving slowly and is not expected to come to any conclusion earlier than...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce later Tuesday his intention to promote annexation steps in the occupied West Bank if he wins the next week's elections, an Israeli official tells me. Why it matters: Netanyahu has already spoken about annexation before Israel's elections in April, but he didn’t commit or promise anything. Netanyahu’s statement is directed at his right-wing base and the settler lobby in order to boost support for his Likud party over other right-wing parties, ensuring that Likud wins most seats in the elections to gain an upper hand in building a coalition. The international...

Israel will be holding national elections on September 17 for the second time this year. This is the second part of a series that offers insight into perspectives beyond whether Bibi will be reelected.* Unlike a two-party system, Israel has a parliamentary democracy which means that as many as 40 parties have competed to win votes to be represented in the Knesset. People vote for a party and its list of candidates rather than for a specific candidate. In order to be represented in Knesset, any party must receive at least 3.25% of the vote which means that there might...