UPDATE - Netanyahu Returns Mandate To Form Government To President After Coalition Talks Collapse

TEL AVIV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd October, 2019) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu handed back the mandate to form a government to President Reuven Rivlin on Monday after he failed to form a ruling coalition within the 28-day deadline.

After neither of the parties managed to secure the required 61-seat majority in the September 17 general election, Rivlin tasked Likud party leader Netanyahu with forming a coalition government.

"I received Prime Minister MK Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement that he is returning the mandate to form the government because he was unable to do [so]," Rivlin wrote on Twitter.

The president added that in accordance with the law, he now intended to transfer the mandate to the chairman of the Blue and White alliance, Benny Gantz, and give him 28 days to build a coalition government.

Netanyahu later issued a video address confirming that he had returned the mandate.

"Once I received the mandate, I continuously acted - both openly and secretly - to create a broad government of national unity.

This is what the people wants. This is what Israel needs in light of the security challenges that are growing day by day," Netanyahu said in his speech, published on Twitter.

He, however, said that "it is still not too late" to form a coalition government with Gantz, who rejected his compromise offer for a cabinet with an equal representation of the two parties' members last week.

"If Gantz comes to his senses, if he frees himself from the pressure of [the leaders of other key parties, Yair] Lapid and [Avigdor] Lieberman, if he abandons the idea of a minority government, we will be able to create together the government that the State of Israel needs so much - a broad government of national unity," the prime minister added.

Netanyahu, who turned 70 on Monday, has been at the government's helm for 10 years. He became the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history in June, beating the record set by the Jewish state's founding father, David Ben-Gurion.