The Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yisrael Beytenu have reached an agreement to bring Avigdor Lieberman’s party into the governing coalition.
Lieberman will become Israel’s new defense minister and is expected to be sworn on Tuesday.
Yisrael Beytenu will also be given the immigration absorption portfolio in the government, which will be headed by Sofa Landver, who already held the same ministerial post between 2009 and 2015.
The deal will expand the government’s 61-seat majority in the Knesset to 66 seats, while shrinking the opposition to just 54.
One of the main concessions Lieberman’s party obtained was a pension increase. It will be applied to all elderly immigrants and not only those who hailed from the former Soviet Union, as Yisrael Beytenu had initially demanded.
Last week, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon from the Likud party resigned from his post after it emerged that Netanyahu had offer the defense portfolio to Lieberman. Ya’alon cited a “lack of trust” in the prime minister.
