Liberman says he’ll recommend Netanyahu as next PM, giving coalition a majority

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman says he is not satisfied with the results of last week’s general elections, but that he will recommend Benjamin Netanyahu as the next prime minister. This means Netanyahu now has the publicly confirmed support of 65 of the 120 members of the next Knesset, giving him a confirmed clear path to a majority coalition.

“There’s a leader, and the people have decided, and that decision must be respected,” Liberman says at a press conference in Jerusalem. “We will recommend Netanyahu as prime minister tomorrow.”

He says he promised before the elections that he would be part of a right-wing government, and that he stands by his promise, but that the new coalition must act like a right-wing government and not just talk like one. Liberman resigned as defense minister last November in protest at Netanyahu’s ostensibly weak response to rocket fire and other violence from Hamas-run Gaza. He says tonight that he wants to be defense minister again, and also wants the Absorption Ministry for his party.

However, he won’t sign a coalition agreement with Netanyahu, he says, unless or until he is certain that the Draft Law, on conscripting more ultra-Orthodox males into the IDF, will be passed in its current form.

Liberman also says that the five Knesset seats won by his party represent a “significant victory against all the odds.”

“We fought against a wall to wall coalition that sought to destroy us,” he says. “It was an all out war” that was fought on the digital and political fronts “in a way that I have never seen before.”

TV news reports claim Liberman and his party may now formally join forces with Netanyahu’s Likud, as Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu is also reportedly in negotiations to do.