Netanyahu races to form govt ahead of deadline

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on Wednesday locked in a last-ditch effort to piece together a ruling coalition with a working majority ahead of a midnight deadline.

With less than 12 hours left, talks with the far-right Jewish Home -- the only potential coalition partner yet to agree to join a Netanyahu government -- took on heightened urgency.

If Netanyahu manages to sign the party, as expected, it will give him a razor-thin majority of 61 within the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament.

If he fails, President Reuven Rivlin will ask another party leader to form a government -- most likely Isaac Herzog, head of the centre-left Zionist Union, which won 24 seats in the March election.

Netanyahu’s success or failure rests in the hands of Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, who raised the stakes in the negotiations by demanding ministerial portfolios for all eight of members of his faction.

Without his support, Netanyahu, who began his second term as premier in 2009, will fail and the rightwing religious government he had been hoping to form will never see the light of day.

Although the deadline is midnight (2100 GMT), Netanyahu does not need to present his final lineup but merely inform the president that he has sufficient support to form a government.

The main sticking point has been the justice ministry portfolio which Bennett was demanding but Netanyahu wanted to keep for his rightwing Likud party.

By early afternoon, Netanyahu appeared to have capitulated, Israel’s main news outlets said, with the portfolio likely to be given to Ayelet Shaked, number three within Jewish Home.