Late Wednesday
evening before the clock struck midnight
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needed to finalize a coalition of parties
willing to endorse him in order to secure his fourth term as Israel’s leader. Two
hours before his deadline he cinched a deal with the hardline pro-settler group
Bayit Yehudi headed by the charismatic Naftali Bennett. Even with the deal,
Netanyahu now hangs by a thread. His coalition includes a scant 61 out of 120 parliament
members, down from the 67 votes he thought were in his pocket. The government
will convene with a cabinet full of Netanyahu’s political rivals and a weak
coalition—one of the weakest in Israel’s
history. If Netanyahu cannot appease every member of his ruling government, he
will need to seek support from his opposition led by the Zionist Camp’s Issac
Herzog in order to survive.
Netanyahu’s coalition-building process was
thrown into disarray Monday when Netanyahu’s chief political ally, Avigdor Liberman
announced Monday his group and their 6 votes were out the door. The two split
last year over social benefits that Lieberman wanted for his
secular-nationalist constituents, but Netanyahu gave them to religious
right-wing groups instead.
The deal Netanyahu cut with Bennett means the
Likud party is headed even further to the right. The Likud negotiating team
dispatched Ze’ev Elkin to lock in the last minute agreement with Bennett’s camp
that saved Netanyahu. Elkin is a settler and Knesset chair of the foreign
affairs and defense committees. He comes from the far-right strand of Likud. As
an unabashed annexationist, he wants to
formally incorporate the West Bank into Israel. He does not support any
form of Palestinian sovereignty. His leadership in bringing in Bennett signals
an even steeper hardline turn.
The full contents of the agreement will be
revealed by next week when the new cabinet members are announced and sworn in. Already
Israeli correspondents are reporting on the horse trading that took
place for Bennett’s votes. Haaretz wrote:
“The education budget will be raised by 630
million shekels (163.4 million), 1 billion shekel (250 million dollars) will be
allocated for raising the salaries of soldiers in their third year, andriv the
Ariel University budget will be raised. In addition, the NGO bill will likely
be passed, a focus will be made on improving accessibility for disabled in
educational institution, on security measures for transportation in the West Bank, and on strengthening missions in the
periphery.”
Some cabinet positions were made public
immediately. Although Bennett heads the fourth smallest party in the government
(eight seats), he ruefully exploited Netanyahu’s desperation. A top minister
position was reserved for Ayelet Shaked who is most known outside of Israel for her
frequent and repeated xenophobic remarks. Mondoweiss’ Ben Norton reported yesterday on her
yesterday, and her calls for a genocide on the Palestinian people.
Another leadership spot went to Bayit Yehudi’s
Uri Ariel. The current housing minister was upgraded to run the Ministry of
Agriculture, a powerful position because it presides over the World Zionist
Organization’s Settlement Division, a pool of millions of dollars of dark funds
used for construct settlements. Haaretz also reported Bayit Yehudi will get the
position of Deputy Defense Minister.
Netanyahu and Likud have not made any statements
on the coalition or the deal with Bennett other than a few ceremonial words to
President Reuven Rivlin. “I am honored to inform you that I have been
successful in forming a government, which I will request is brought before the
Knesset for its approval as soon as possible,” he said.
Herzog who came in second in the 2015 elections
winning 24 seats to Netanyahu’s 30, and Palestinian leaders have come out with
full forced rejections of Israel’s
nosedive to the right. Herzog wrote on Facebook Shaked’s appointment
“threatened the rule of law” and the deal with Bennett was a state-run “fire
sale.”
“Netanyahu has once again proven survival is
more important than improving the welfare and quality of life for all citizens
of Israel
who are yearning for change and hope,” said Herzog.
Head of Israel’s third largest party and leader
of the Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh told Mondoweiss,
“The Netanyahu-Bennett coalition is a social disaster and danger for democracy.
This coalition buries down all hope for a peace agreement and solving the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” He said the new government would cause deep
rifts between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel, promoting “racist laws
which will harm the most the Arab citizens in the country.”
With such a thin margin of support, Netanyahu
cannot afford any moves that would cause his coalition to crumble. Although in
the wake of his silence on the coalition deal, some commentators speculated it
is Netanyahu who is playing Bennett.
“This is only round one,” wrote Aaron David Miller for the Wall Street Journal. Miller suggested
Netanyahu accepted Bennett’s terms in bad faith, writing the prime minister
could have made the agreement with plans to later swap out Bennett’s party for
the center-left Zionist Union headed by opposition leader Issac Herzog.
There is logic to this ploy. By signing a truce
with Bennett, even one that leaves Netanyahu (temporarily) powerless, Netanyahu
gets to keep his mandate as prime minister. If he had dropped Bennett and
forged a more stable coalition with Herzog straight out of the gate, Herzog was
thought to demand sharing the prime minister position on a two-year rotation. “A
national unity government with Mr. Herzog would solve some of Mr. Netanyahu’s
problems and leave him in the center, “ wrote Miller, “But Mr. Netanyahu won’t
agree to rotate.”
This all means that in a matter of weeks Bennett
could be out and Herzog, or someone else, could be in. Although Herzog has not
given any indication this might happen, Netanyahu does at least have an
opportunity to surface with strength yet again. When elections were called for
last year he was initially regarded a clear front-runner, although the race
proved tight. He did clear 6 seats above Herzog in the final ballot count. Then
when the polls closed it was obvious that Netanyahu faced major hurdles in
coalition building. He has political enemies. And his friends in his coalition
are not friends with each other. Still, if Netanyahu can keep his government
together and complete his full four-year term, he will surpass David Ben-Gurion’s time in office and become Israel’s
longest serving prime minister.
07/05/2015 en MONDO
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahus-coalition-whos?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=a81dbd3999-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-a81dbd3999-398519201
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