Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signed a coalition agreement, after a year of uncertainty and three elections, to create a government that should keep him in power for at least another year and a half. If all goes well with his corruption trial, set to begin on May 24 after a postponement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he will have outwitted his opponents once again and remained in office more than a decade. How does Israel’s leader keep going when his own party never gets more than 35 seats in the country’s 120-member Knesset and he seems to have alienated parties on the left, right and centre?
Netanyahu has outlasted his rivals by playing them off against each other. In most countries if you failed to win two elections and form a government, it would probably be time to step aside. That’s what happens in Italy or the UK in recent years when political leaders have stumbled.
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