JERUSALEM – Israel's president on Wednesday signaled he would move quickly to task a new candidate with forming a government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so ahead of a midnight deadline.
President Reuven Rivlin will meet with the two main candidates for forming a government — opposition leader Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally — on Wednesday morning.
He asked parties to make their positions known before 2 p.m. (1100 GMT). Netanyahu's political future was thrown into question when he failed to assemble a ruling coalition in the four weeks allotted to him, raising the possibility that his 12-year run as prime minister — the longest in Israeli history — could soon come to an end.