New PM of Israel elected
- The Knesset (parliament of Israel) approved Naftali Bennett as Israel’s new Prime Minister.
- Benjamin Netanyahu lost his 12-year-old grip on power as he is on trial for fraud, and he fell short of obtaining majority support after the general election in March this year — the country’s fourth inconclusive vote in two years.
- Naftali Bennett is a former aide to Netanyahu.
- The centrist Yair Lapid will replace Bennett as PM after two years if their fragile government survives till then.
- Bennett and Lapid lead an extraordinary eight-party coalition that has parties both on the left and right, secular as well as religious, and who are united essentially only by their desire to pull Netanyahu from power.
- The New PM of Israel is labeled as “ultra-nationalist” for his views.
- Bennett is known for being a strong advocate of the Jewish nation-state, and for insisting on Jewish historical and religious claims to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, territory near the Israel-Syria border that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war.