I am genuinely suprised to see him out of office
@GoldRanger can you give us a brief rundown of the situation?
Netanyahu has managed to piss off too many former allies on the right.
1. Recently, Israel has been stuck in a political loop, unable to form a coalition and forced to go to elections again and again (without getting into long explanations for the Americans who aren't familiar with how parliamentary democracy works, it's a bit like having a tie between the left and the right, except not exactly)
2. The new prime minister, Bennet, used to be a minister under Netantahu's administration, twice, in fact. He was also, IIRC, Netanyahu's aide or something like that at the start of his political career. He's also the founder (or one of the founders) of a successful start-up software company that made him a millionaire after he sold it.
3. The guy who actually successfully formed the new coalition is Yair Lapid, a former news anchor and the head of the largest Centrist party, who got the second largest number of votes in the last elections, after Netanyahu. He actually has what is called a "rotation agreement" with Bennet, meaning after 2 years he becomes the prime minister and Bennet steps down.
4. Bennet's party is hardline right, possibly more so than Netanyahu. But it got only 6/120 seats in the last elections, literally 5% of the vote, and he got the premiership only by political shenanigans (basically holding the other parties hostage unless he got what he wanted). His voter base is currently pissed at him because he promised before the election not to sit in a government with Lapid (whom Bennet's voter base consider a dangerous unproven amateur with no real achievements in his political career, too anti-religion and too left in general), even signing a document to this effect on live broadcast. They broadly call him a liar and a thief who stole their votes and gave them to the left. Seems like, if there was another election, Bennet would find it hard to survive it.
5. The new coalition includes far-left parties that are openly pro-Palestinian, and even one Arab party with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood! The right still dominates the leadership positions, but the others can paralyze and disband the government at any time, so they hold a considerable power.
6. Other right wing politicians that Netanyahu pissed off and have entered the coalition against him are Lieberman (served as minister under Netantahu's administration, leads a secular right-wing party, voter base is mostly Russian immigrants. Considered very corrupt), and Gideon Saar (was recently in Netanyahu's party and was considered for a long time his main rival from within, now leading his own newly formed moderate right party with most members "stolen" from Netanyahu's).
Tl;dr: the new government is an unwieldy left-right-Arab chimera stitched together artificially, with only hatred for Netanyahu pulling them together. How they'll function in practice when contentious issues rear their heads remains to be seen.
en.wikipedia.org
