Israel elects Naftali Bennett as new Prime Minister ending Netanyahu's 12-year tenure

In a big development, Naftali Bennett has been elected as the new Isreal Prime Minister replacing Benjamin Netanyahu. Bennett, 49, presented his new government's ministers in the Knesset on Sunday in a speech constantly interrupted by Netanyahu's supporters. The prospective government - an unprecedented coalition of ideologically divergent political parties drawn from the Right, the Left, and the Centre, along with an Arab party - has a razor-thin majority of 61 lawmakers in a 120-member house.

Naftali Bennett elected new Israel president

Bennett, a former ally turned rival of Netanyahu, is leading a fragile coalition of eight parties - Yamina, Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid, New Hope, Labor, Meretz, United Arab List, Kahol Lavan, and Yisrael Beiteinu. The approval of the new government by the Knesset would bring to an end 12 years of uninterrupted rule by 71-year-old Netanyahu, who holds the record of being the longest-serving Prime Minister in the country's history. Having served in the position earlier between 1996 and 1999, Netanyahu last year surpassed the record held by one of the Jewish state's founding leaders, David Ben-Gurion.

Bennett, a former ally turned rival of Netanyahu, is leading a fragile coalition of eight parties - Yamina, Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid, New Hope, Labor, Meretz, United Arab List, Kahol Lavan, and Yisrael Beiteinu. The alliance contains parties that have vast ideological differences, and perhaps most significantly includes the first independent Arab party to be part of a potential ruling coalition, Ra'am. The new government to be sworn in has 27 ministers, nine of them women.

Bennett has entered into a power-sharing agreement with Centrist leader Yair Lapid, the head of the Yesh Atid party, under which the latter would take over Premiership in September 2023, serving for two years till the end of the term. Lapid, the leader of the second-largest faction in the Knesset with 17 seats was invited by President Reuven Rivlin to form a coalition after Netanyahu, leading the Likud party with 30 seats, expressed his inability to put together a government backed by a majority of the lawmakers. The unstable coalition that Lapid has managed to put together faces severe challenges and the glue that seems to hold them together is the 'unity of purpose' created by the agenda of ousting Netanyahu.

(with inputs from AP)