Iran Press/Middle East: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask Israel’s president Reuven Rivlin for more time to form a new government.
A spokesman for Netanyahu on Saturday cited a heavy schedule that included Jewish holidays, national memorial days and increasing tension between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip last week as some of the reasons for seeking the delay, Reuters reported.
In office for a decade, Netanyahu won a fifth term in an April 9 parliamentary election, as he faces possible indictment in three corruption cases.
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In addition to the corruption charges, another scandal is brewing for Netanyahu because an Israeli watchdog group has found a network of hundreds of social media accounts, many of them fake, used to smear opponents of Prime Minister Netanyahu in elections and to amplify the messages of his Likud party.
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