With his political future in doubt, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he would skip next week’s United Nations General Assembly.
Near-final results from Israel’s election left Netanyahu well short of the parliamentary majority he had sought — not only to continue in power but also to fend off a looming corruption indictment.
With 95% of the votes counted late Wednesday, challenger Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party had captured 33 seats in the 120-seat parliament, to 32 seats for Netanyahu’s conservative Likud.
This would mark the first time in his decade as Israel’s leader that Netanyahu didn’t address the General Assembly. In his stead, Foreign Minister Israel Katz will speak for the country next week.
Netanyahu had been listed as the 12th speaker on Sept. 26, the third and last day of speeches by world leaders, and was scheduled to take the podium just three slots after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Israel’s embattled leader was also expected to meet President Trump — a close ally — on the sidelines of the meeting. Trump, who said Wednesday he had not spoken to Netanyahu since the election, will speak to the UN on Tuesday and had tweeted that he planned to meet Netanyahu, 69, to discuss an Israel-US defense pact.
Netanyahu, who made his close relationship with Trump a main selling point in his campaign, has made no claim of victory or concession of defeat.
The hard-fought election has thus far produced a virtual tie between Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc and a center-left grouping that would be led by Gantz, 60, his former military chief. And it comes on the heels of the failure of Israel’s longest-serving leader to put together an administration after an inconclusive election in April.
Netanyahu also has been dogged by allegations of corruption, which he has denied.
But with coalition building again key to forming a government, it could be days or even weeks before it becomes clear whether the politician hailed by supporters as “King Bibi” had been dethroned after a decade in power.
The bloc led by Likud was more or less even with a likely grouping headed by Blue and White and looked poised to control 55 of Parliament’s 120 seats, with 56 going to a center-left alliance, both falling short of a majority government of 61 lawmakers.
The ballot’s wild card, former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, emerged as a likely kingmaker as head of the secular-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, projected to capture nine seats.
With Reuters