Netanyahu asks to be charged with forming a government

Minutes after Israel's President Reuven Rivlin refused to grant Benny Gantz an extension of the deadline for forming a government - which ends tomorrow night - Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud asked that he be given the mandate to try.

"The Likud movement is once again asking President Rivlin to transfer the mandate to Prime Minister Netanyahu, leader of the party most represented in the Knesset and with 59 recommendations (out of 120)," the party said in a statement. The conservative Likud considers it coherent to take this course, since it would mean that the presidency will do "what was done after the last elections in September, when it transferred the mandate from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Deputy Gantz.

Rivlin rejected this day to extend Gantz the 28 days he has had for the negotiations of the formation of the Executive, carried out with the Likud to arrive at a unity government, but which have not yet come to fruition. The 14-day extension provided for by law depends on the will of the president, but is usually granted automatically.

However, Rivlin said in the rejection statement that, instead of handing over the mandate to another political leader, he would return the matter to Parliament, which would have 21 days to refer the matter to any deputy it considers likely to set up an executive that receives the approval of a simple majority of 61 of the 120 legislators.

In this way, the assignment could finally reach Netanyahu, even if it is not given directly by the president. However, everything points to the fact that he would have to overcome a stumbling block first, since a petition was filed with the Supreme Court on Sunday to prevent a deputy formally accused of crimes from being commissioned to form a cabinet, reported the digital Times of Israel.

The Supreme Court received a similar petition in January, but declined to rule on the grounds that it could not rule on hypothetical situations and would assess the matter if the situation arose.

Israeli law requires the resignation of an accused minister, but not of a prime minister, and makes no reference to the possibility of an accused person having the opportunity to form a government.

Netanyahu is accused of three counts of corruption and his trial should have begun last March, but because of the country's coronavirus alert the Ministry of Justice, in the hands of the Likud, suspended all legal proceedings two days before he was due to sit on the bench, postponing the hearing until May.