Netanyahu passes baton to Bennett

VETERAN leader Benjamin Netanyahu handed over power in Israel yesterday to new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett but remained defiant as the patchwork government faced tensions with Palestinians over a planned Jewish nationalist march.

Minutes after meeting Bennett, Netanyahu repeated a pledge to topple the new government approved on Sunday by a 60-59 vote in parliament.

Formation of the alliance of rightwing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties, with little in common other than a desire to unseat Netanyahu, capped coalition-building efforts after a March 23 election, Israel’s fourth poll in two years. Instead of the traditional toasts marking Bennett’s entry into the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu held a low-key meeting there with the former defence chief, who heads the nationalist Yamina party, to brief him on government business.

The government was already facing a decision over whether to approve a procession planned for today by Jewish nationalists through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Palestinian factions have called for a “day of rage” against the event, with memories of clashes with Israeli police still fresh from last month in contested Jerusalem’s Al-aqsa Mosque compound and in an area of the city where Palestinians face eviction in a court dispute with Jewish settlers.

“This is … an aggression against our Jerusalem and our holy sites,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said.

The Hamas Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip warned of the possibility of renewed hostilities if the march goes ahead, less than a month after a ceasefire ended 11 days of cross-border hostilities with Israeli forces. A route change or cancelling the procession could expose the Israeli government to accusations from its right-wing opponents of giving Hamas veto power over events in Jerusalem.

Deputy internal security minister Yoav Segalovitz said past governments had stopped nationalists visiting Muslim sites in times of tension. “The main thing is to consider what’s the right thing to do at this time,” he said.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, to be the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in a move that has not won international recognition after capturing the area in a 1967 war, regards the entire city as its capital.

Israel’s new government had hoped to avoid hot-button issues such as policy towards the Palestinians and on domestic reforms and the economy.

Under the coalition deal, Bennett, a 49-year-old Orthodox Jew and tech millionaire who advocates annexing parts of the West Bank, will be replaced as Prime Minister in 2023 by centrist Yair Lapid, 57, a former TV host.