Benjamin Netanyahu has 10 extra days to form a governing coalition after Israeli President Isaac Herzog extended the deadline on Friday, five weeks after elections left a complicated parliamentary landscape out of which to craft a government.
The president's decision means Netanyahu now has until December 21 to present a working government coalition.
Netanyahu, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and then again from 2009 to 2021, led his Likud party to take the greatest number of seats after November's elections, the country's fifth within four years.
However, with only 32 seats, Likud needs coalition partners to get a 61-seat majority in the Knesset. The most likely scenario would see Likud teaming up with the extreme right-wing Religious Zionist party and two other ultra-religious parties to get 64 seats.
But the right-wing tilt of such a government has caused many political observers in Israel to recoil, prompting calls for moderate parties to work with Netanyahu to form a less extreme government.
However, many of those moderate parties were in the last government, a coalition of very different parties that campaigned specifically on a platform of keeping Netanyahu out of office.
Netanyahu had requested a two-week extension for the talks due to still-open questions in the negotiations, but a letter released by the presidential office showed that only 10 days were granted. Herzog's office did not explain why a shorter time was granted.
It is not unusual for coalition talks in Israel to extend beyond the allotted four-week window.
