Zaid Jilani says Israel’s new government ‘a coalition of convenience’

Journalist Zaid Jilani on Monday weighed in on the ousting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu via a new coalition made up of a hodgepodge of political parties, saying that the group “came together as a coalition of convenience.”

The Israeli parliament on Sunday approved a new power-sharing government, officially ending Netanyahu’s 12-years of leading the country.

Naftali Bennett, the Orthodox leader of Israel’s religious-nationalist movement and a former Netanyahu aide, will now serve as prime minister.

“I think that again, this coalition came together as a coalition of convenience. I think many people had differing frustrations with Likud,” Jilani said on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” referring to Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

He said that while the coalition of parties that are now included in Israel’s government may not agree on most issues, they were all in favor of Netanyahu being ousted from power.

“I don’t think that they would agree on, you know, 6 or 7 out of 10 issues, but they did agree that there needed to be a new government in Israel. And I think after 12 years Benjamin Netanyahu had created quite a few enemies, right, and those enemies were able to kind of talk to each other and figure it out,” Jilani said.

“So I think having that common, that one common purpose of toppling the incumbent government and having disagreements with that government on a range of issues, actually is kind of what brought them together. They didn’t really need necessarily to have much more agreement than other than that,” he added.


hilltv copyright