Netanyahu's strongest challengers form alliance in Israeli election

'WITCH-HUNT'

Netanyahu's political future has also been clouded by three corruption cases in which the attorney-general is expected to decide soon whether to accept police recommendations to indict him.

The prime minister is suspected of wrongfully accepting gifts from wealthy businessmen and dispensing favours in alleged bids for favourable coverage in a newspaper and a website.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing, saying he is a victim of a left-wing witch-hunt to topple him. His opponents are attacking his record and underlining the need for clean governance.

While Gantz and Lapid worked out their deal, Netanyahu helped negotiate the merger of two far-right parties, Jewish Home and Jewish Power, that could give followers of the late anti-Arab rabbi, Meir Kahane, a stronger voice in politics.

Leaders of Jewish Power have portrayed themselves as successors of the U.S.-born Kahane, who served one term in the Knesset in the 1980s as head of the Kach party.

Kach advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries and also called for a ban on intermarriage between Israeli Jews and Arabs.

Kahane's movement was subsequently banned from Israeli politics as racist. He was assassinated in 1990 in New York by an Egyptian-born American.