WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Isaac Herzog has been elected as the Zionist regime’s new president.
The only other contender, Miriam Peretz, lost to Herzog, the son of the occupying regime’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog, in the parliamentary vote.
The regime’s outgoing president, Reuven Rivlin, will step down from the largely ceremonial position on 9 July.
Herzog, 60, held various ministerial posts, including as Labor Party chairman from 2013 to 2018.
Herzog’s mother Aura was born in Ismailia, Egypt, to a Jewish family of Russian and Polish origin.
His father Chaim was born in Belfast, the son of Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, the first chief rabbi of Ireland.
During his inauguration, Hetzog hinted at the prospect of the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ouster as the premier’s rivals are trying to put together a political coalition that would unseat him.
“I’ll be happy to work with” whatever Zionist political system “no matter” who is at the head, he said, with Netanyahu replying abruptly, “Let’s not get into it now.”
The regime’s so-called centrist opposition figure Yair Lapid is closer than ever to unseat 12-year Netanyahu after reaching an agreement to form a coalition cabinet.
Several parties including Lapid’s Yesh Atid party agreed with Zionist war minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party to form a new cabinet.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, Yesh Atid and Blue and White parties said they had agreed that Gantz would remain the war minister in the new cabinet.
Lapid had until midnight Wednesday to present a final slate, after Netanyahu failed to do so in the wake of an inconclusive March 23 election.
The 57-year-old Netanyahu has yet to reach a deal with his main partner, Naftali Bennett, who would serve as premier first under a proposed rotation between the two.
According to a Lapid spokesman, agreements have been reached with the left-wing Meretz and center-left Labor parties as well as with former war minister Avigdor Lieberman’s extremist Yisrael Beitenu party.