Rivlin set to meet with parties as coalition jockeying continues

President Reuven Rivlin was set to meet with the leaders of six parties Sunday before he selects a candidate to form a coaltion.

With a six-seat lead, Likud leader and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly be asked to form the next government after Rivlin consults with the party heads.

Faction leaders representing 61 of the 120 Knesset members are set to recommend that Netanyahu be charged with forming the next government.

The Likud, Zionist Union, Joint (Arab) List, Jewish Home, Shas, and United Torah Judaism party heads are slated to meet Rivlin Sunday, while Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Yisrael Beytenu, and Meretz chiefs will sit with the president Monday.

As coalition maneuvering heats up behind the scenes, Moshe Kahlon’s new Kulanu party and the ultra-Orthodox UTJ party are jostling for the key Knesset Finance Committee chairmanship, Israeli news site NRG reported.

Kulanu sources said that in addition to leading the Finance Ministry, Kahlon wants the Finance Committee chair, as well as the Housing Ministry.

But UTJ wants former Finance Committee chair Moshe Gafni to return to the post he held 2009-2013, NRG reported.

Likud sources said that a compromise being hammered out would see Gafni back in the Finance Committee, while he would commit not to hold-up legislation important to Kahlon.

While Kulanu (10), Jewish Home (8), Shas (7) and United Torah Judaism (6) — five of the six parties with which Netanyahu intends to build his coalition following his success in the March 17 elections — have committed to Netanyahu’s government. along with his own Likud’s 30 seats, Yisrael Beytenu (6 seats) is set to decide on Sunday whether to recommend Netanyahu. Party leader Avigdor Liberman is holding out for the job of defense minister, which Netanyahu does not intend to give him.

Netanyahu wants to keep his outgoing defense minister, foreign minister and economy minister in their posts, an Israeli TV report said Friday night.

Israeli TV and newspapers have been rife with speculation in the past three days over who will get which portfolio in the next government. Channel 2 news Friday night said Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett also wants the defense role for himself and the education portfolio for a party colleague, and that Liberman might not join the coalition at all if he doesn’t get the defense post.

Netanyahu’s preference, the report said, is to retain Likud colleague Moshe Ya’alon as defense minister, leave Liberman at the Foreign Ministry and keep Bennett at the Economy Ministry — an arrangement certain to be unacceptable to Bennett.

Kahlon, the former Likud minister whose new Kulanu party won 10 seats, has demanded the post of finance minister in the new government, but is also said to seek other positions of influence for party members.

Shas leader Aryeh Deri is tipped in some quarters for the Interior Ministry, although centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid on Saturday urged Netanyahu not to give it to him, since Deri has served time for bribe-taking.

Shas did not take Lapid’s comments lying down, saying in a statement Saturday evening that it was “done taking orders from the gentleman.

“The worst finance minister in the history of the State of Israel dares to reproach (us), after he crippled tens of thousands of families and brought them to the breadline,” the party responded. “After two years of amateurish economic leadership, the people of Israel deserve an experienced leadership.”

Rivlin is widely believed to have favored a “unity government,” pairing both Netanyahu’s Likud and Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union, but would seem to have little leeway in formally charging Netanyahu alone with the task of forming the new government.