Israel’s new lawmakers were sworn in on Tuesday amid difficult negotiations to form a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, hours after an attack by a Palestinian that killed three Israelis.
In the wake of this attack perpetrated in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, the extreme right, with a record number of seats in the Knesset (14), reiterated its desire to introduce the death penalty for The Terrorists “.
With 64 seats out of the 120 in Parliament, Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc came out on top in the legislative elections of 1er November, the fifth election in three and a half years.
The longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, in power from 1996 to 1999 and then from 2009 to 2021, Mr. Netanyahu was mandated on Sunday to form the government, despite his indictment for corruption in a series of cases.
The camp of his centrist rival Yaïr Lapid, who had ousted him from power in June 2021, only obtained 51 seats.
The lawmakers were sworn in in the presence of Speaker Isaac Herzog and in a sparsely left-wing Knesset. The Meretz party is absent from the hemicycle for the first time, and Labor has gone from seven to four seats.
Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to be “everyone’s prime minister”, but his government may be the most right-wing in Israel’s history, raising concerns locally and abroad.
The investiture in Parliament came hours after another attack in the West Bank.
A Palestinian killed three Israeli civilians near a settlement in the north of the territory, before being shot dead.
The Israeli army reported a “knife attack” near the Ariel industrial zone. “A terrorist arrived at the gate entrance to the area and stabbed civilians. “Other civilians were stabbed at a nearby gas station. The terrorist fled in a stolen car and hit another civilian,” the army added in a statement.
Three other people were injured in the attack, two of them seriously. far-right alliance Religious Zionism, after the attack.
“Three Jews were killed in a despicable attack. This is a signal for the future government: we must adopt the death penalty for terrorists”, wrote on Twitter Itamar Ben Gvir, number 2 of the alliance.
Around 474,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank in illegal settlements under international law, alongside 2.9 million Palestinians.