JERUSALEM: Naftali Bennett was on Sunday sworn in as Israel’s new Prime Minister, ousting Benjamin Netanyahu from power after an uninterrupted 12 years at the helm of affairs.
Bennett, the 49-year-old leader of the right-wing Yamina party, took oath of office after parliament (Knesset) voted on Sunday on the new government led by him. The new government has 27 ministers, nine of them women.
The new 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 in a 120-member house.
Earlier, Bennett presented his new government’s ministers in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in a speech constantly interrupted by supporters of 71-year-old Netanyahu.
Amid incessant heckling from rival bloc’s lawmakers, Bennett said he was proud “of the ability to sit with people of different opinions”. “At the decisive moment we took responsibility,” he said. “The alternative to this government was more elections, more hate, which would have broken up the country.” “It is time for responsible leaders from different parts of the nation to stop this madness,” he asserted. 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.