As we noted the night before last, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had till midnight yesterday (Israel time) to form a coalition or (an extremely improbable event) give up the chance to be the country’s next Prime Minister. And now he’s done that just an hour or so before the deadline, adding the far-right Jewish Home party of Naftali Bennett (a one-time protege turned quasi-nemesis) to his new government. It was always a given that Bennett’s party would join. But things changed on Monday when Avigdor Lieberman (another protege turned quasi-nemesis) abruptly announced that he would not join the next government and would instead take his now greatly diminished Yisrael Beiteinu party into the opposition.
That dramatically changed the situation.
Without Lieberman, the maximum number of seats Netanyahu could assemble (without making a dramatic overture to the center-left) was the exact same number as the absolute minimum required to form a government: 61 seats.
That meant that Bennett could demand almost anything and Netanyahu had little choice but to give it to him. And that is largely what he did.
Over the course of negotiations (and even before the March 17th election) Bennett has pushed for the Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry. But in the final bickering, the real plum his party wanted was the Justice Ministry – a portfolio which is less visible from abroad but is critical for the policy agenda Jewish Home espouses.
Ayelet Shaked
That post will go to Ayelet Shaked, a Michele Bachmann type figure most known for thinking Israel currently has too much democracy and too many rights for its non-Jewish ethnic minorities – which mainly means the country’s Arab minority. Also a too-independent judiciary. This and other reasons are why Netanyahu fiercely resisted this demand and appears to have spent the final hours of negotiations finding ways to fence in the authority Shaked would have in the position.
The key reality is that literally any member of Netanyahu’s coalition, let alone any party, can credibly threaten to topple the government at any time. So he is hostage to the most clownish members of the parties he’s built his government on. And his team has a high density of clowns. They are the most right wing and/or most theocratically affiliated parties in the state. On its face, the government would seem primed to push through various anti-democratic legislation and, more pointedly, a new wave of settlement activity outside the core blocs of settlement. But the brittleness and instability of the government is likely its most significant attribute.
A government with only a single-seat majority, made up of parties that will put the government into immediate conflict with the international community, cannot possibly last long or accomplish much. Netanyahu seems to concede as much by openly broadcasting an intention to expand his coalition in the months ahead. The most plausible additions are finding a way to bring Lieberman’s party back into the fold, to bring in the Zionist Union/Labor party or perhaps peal off individual members out of ZU or Yesh Atid.
These moves may or may not prove possible. But the key is that the looming possibility of additions that will dramatically reduce the clout of the rightist parties give them a massive incentive to press their advantage now as much as they can. And that again simply makes the point that the government Netanyahu has created is essentially at war with itself from the start. It is also possible – and this is clearly his intention – that Netanyahu will keep the rightist parties in line by holding the threat of additions of their heads. But as I said, it all comes down to a government that starts at war with itself and only has one real logic: to keep Netanyahu in power. A government put together on these terms either can’t do much or can’t last long. Probably neither.
Late Update: There is an additional element to this story that is worth noting, one that weaves together the current drama to the lead-up to the voting proper in mid-March. Netanyahu scored a resounding and at least in its scale largely unexpected victory. But remember how he did it. The so-called right bloc – the rightwing and religious parties – actually got slightly smaller after this election. This is a very important point. What Netanyahu did was rally the right around himself and essentially gut his two ‘natural partner’ parties – Jewish Home and Yisrael Beiteinu.
Jewish Home lost 4 seats, YB lost 7 and Likud gained 12. It was almost a perfect swap. By arguing (logically and convincingly) to the Israeli right that only a big win for Likud could ensure another right wing government, Netanyahu managed to grab a bunch of those parties’ seats for himself and Likud. That made Likud by far the largest party and all but guaranteed him another term in office. But the upshot of that was to deepen the already existing enmity toward Netanyahu – something that likely played a significant role in Lieberman’s decision to put him into this position and Bennett’s willingness to make extortionate demands for his party’s entry into the government.
