President Rivlin receives 72 MKs’ signatures for Netanyahu as PM

Likud and Kahol Lavan handed the president the 72 signatures collected in the Knesset for recommending Binyamin Netanyahu’s appointment as first prime minister of their United National Emergency Government. The joint prime ministers are to be sworn in next Wednesday, although dickering continues over the allocation ministerial portfolios. President Reuven Rivlin replied that the country has never before gone through three elections without producing a government while more recently struggling against coronavirus with the rest of the world. The law amendments enacted on Thursday for supporting the new government contain a loophole for restoring the incoming government’s curtailed three-year term to the customary four and-a-half years by a vote of 70 MKs.