Israel's Liberman lists conditions for joining coalition

A week after Israel's third parliamentary election in under a year ended once again in a stalemate, kingmaker Avigdor Liberman on Sunday listed his conditions for joining any coalition.

Liberman of the nationalist, secular Yisrael Beiteinu party, which according to near-final results won seven seats, revealed his demands on his Facebook page.

They included a long-standing demand that local municipalities should decide on whether public transportation be allowed on Saturdays, and not the central government.

He also repeated other key policies calling for ultra-Orthodox students of yeshivas, or religious seminaries, to be drafted into the army; civil marriage; and easier conversion to Judaism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition collapsed in late 2018 over a bill to draft yeshiva students into the army.

But elections in April and then again in September resulted in a stalemate. Elections on March 2 again produced no majority either for Netanyahu's camp of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties, or the centre-left camp of former military chief of staff Benny Gantz.

Netanyahu's Likud emerged as the biggest party with 36 seats, against 33 for Gantz' centrist Blue and White alliance. But the Netanyahu-led bloc won a combined 58 seats in Israel's 120-seat Knesset, three short of a majority. Gantz' bloc won 55.

The Joint List of Arab parties won an unprecedented 15 mandates. Official final results are due on Tuesday. President Reuven Rivlin will then have one week to decide who should have the first shot at forming a coalition.

The Joint List convened on Sunday on the question of whether to recommend to Rivlin that Gantz be given the task.