Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party was the top-vote getter in the election six weeks ago, but not win a majority. Likud won 25 of the 120 seats in parliament. So, as often happens in multi-party Israel, he had to forge a coalition with other smaller parties in order to form a government.
It had seemed relatively easy until just days ago, when Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman unexpectedly pulled his support. Netanyahu lost the 6 seats of Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, and thus his majority coalition.
Netanyahu finally managed to form an alliance with the Jewish Home party, which has close ties to the settler movement. With Likud's dominating hard-liners, and two other small Ultra-Orthodox partners, their slim majority of 61 seats will only increase the growing discord between Israel and the U.S. and the international community.
Certainly there is no hope for any peace talks or solutions to the conflicts with Palestine, and two votes can derail any legislation in parliament. Unless Netanyahu's can fulfill his promise to convince other small parties to join his coalition.
Yair Lapid, one of the leaders for reform in the outgoing government, said there was no cause for celebration: "A narrow, suspicious and
sectoral government is on its way." Lapid vowed to fight the attempts to undo the reforms.
Isaac Herzog, the leader of the opposition Zionist Union party, called this coalition "a national failure government . . . an embarrassing farce . . . the narrowest [margin] in Israel's history."
It's questionable how long such a fragile coalition can last.
Ralph
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