Fissile fractious coalition

Commentary from 1) Robert Tait, Telegraph, 2) Harriet Salem, Vice News and 3) Jodi Rudoren, NY Times (so we know what Americans are reading).

First flush of new relationship between Naftali Bennet and PM Netanyahu, May 6th. Photo by Gali Tibbon/AFP / Getty Images

Benjamin Netanyahu clinches deal to form new Israeli government

Despite a convincing electoral victory which surprised many, the new coalition will have the slimmest of majorities

By Robert Tait, Daily Telegraph
May 07, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu has reached an 11th hour deal to form a new government, but the coalition will rule by only the slimmest of majorities in Israel’s turbulent parliament.

Nearly two months after a convincing election victory, Mr Netanyahu has struggled to put together a coalition, forcing him into a partnership with the ultranationalist Jewish Home.

The deal will see the three-time prime minister at the head of a narrow coalition, controlling just 61 seats in the 120-member parliament.

The Hebrew-language Maariv daily on Wednesday described Mr Netanyahu as “a general without soldiers.”

Ayelet Shaked, new justice minister, ‘like giving a pyromaniac the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority’. Photo by Artium Degel

He was thought to have bowed to demands from Jewish Home, led by a former aide who with whom he has a rocky relationship, including one to appoint one of its MPs, Ayelet Shaked, as justice minister.

Israeli media reports suggested that Mr Netanyahu had agreed, with negotiations focusing on the remit of a job that would put Mrs Shaked, who is known for her hardline views, in control of the country’s judiciary.

The appointment is sensitive because of proposals, backed by Right-wingers, to dilute the powers of supreme court judges and because the new justice minister will have the power to appoint the next attorney general when the post becomes vacant in the next six months.

The prospect of Mrs Shaked at the helm prompted a wave of criticism. Nachman Shai, an MP for the centre-Left Zionist Union, said it would be “like giving a pyromaniac the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority”.

Mrs Shaked has previously tried to introduce a bill to reduce the supreme court’s ability to strike down legislation it deems unconstitutional. Her bill was tabled after the court overturned a law that would have allowed the jailing of asylum seekers without trial.

She was criticised shortly before last summer’s Gaza conflict after posting on Facebook the text of a 12-year-old address from an Israeli speech writer that appeared to advocate waging war on the “entire [Palestinian] people, including its elderly and its women”. Mrs Shaked said the speech had been mistranslated.

Her likely appointment was the result of a demand from Naftali Bennett, the Jewish Home leader, who raised the stakes as the deadline approached, reportedly refusing at one point to answer phone calls from the prime minister’s envoy.

A senior Palestinian official said on Thursday that the new government would be belligerent and work against peace.

The government “will be one of war which will be against peace and stability in our region,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.

“This government will set its sights on killing and reinforcing settlement activities,” he said of Israel’s ongoing construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state.

On Thursday afternoon it emerged that Israel had approved construction of 900 settler homes in east Jerusalem, a watchdog said.

The new homes will be built in the east Jerusalem settlement neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo following a decision late on Wednesday by the city’s district planning committee, Peace Now spokeswoman Hagit Ofran told AFP.

Officials in Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party criticised Mr Bennett last night for what they called “extortion” tactics during the negotiations and said the prime minister was likely to take revenge.

“The hour of revenge will arrive, and soon,” Israeli daily Haaretz quoted one senior Likud official as saying.

While Mr Netanyahu initially baulked, he appeared to have little option but to agree if he was to form a government.

Mr Netanyahu’s bargaining position weakened this week after Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, announced that his Yisrael Beiteinu party would not be joining the coalition and that he would resign his ministerial post.

Having made agreements with three other parties, giving him 53 seats, Mr Netanyahu needed the Jewish Home’s eight members to form a majority coalition in Israel’s 120-member parliament.

The decline in Mr Netanyahu’s political strength is a far cry from the immediate aftermath of the March 17 election, when he appeared to have won an unexpected landslide after his Likud grouping emerged as the largest party with 30 seats.

Legislative plans under Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition

The following is a breakdown of some of the most-contested legislative proposals Mr Netanyahu and his partners have agreed to consider once the new cabinet takes office.
The information comes from political sources and agreements already struck with coalition partners.
European diplomats have expressed concern about some of the proposals, which they regard as discriminatory or restrictive of judicial oversight:

● The far-Right Jewish Home party has drafted a bill to restrict donations from foreign governments to non-governmental organisations in Israel. Many NGOs operating in Israel, whether Israeli-run or international, receive funds from the EU, US, and elsewhere.

The measure proposes taxing any such income unless Israel’s defence minister and a parliamentary committee on security affairs say otherwise. Critics say the bill is designed to hamper the work of pro-Palestinian groups and those opposed to Jewish settlements on occupied land.

● Measures have been proposed that would limit the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. One bill would permit a simple majority in parliament to override any high court decision that outlaws a piece of Israeli legislation.

● Another seeks to limit the court’s ability to overrule legislation by requiring any such ruling to be made by a majority of nine of Israel’s 11 Supreme Court justices.

Court decisions have angered both Left and Right-wing parties over the years. It drew the wrath of the last Netanyahu administration when it struck down a law that allowed the authorities to detain African illegal migrants without trial.
Mr Netanyahu’s far-Right partners want to increase the size of a government-named panel that selects judges to ensure there would be more lawmakers than judges on that committee.

● Mr Netanyahu has demanded that coalition partners agree to vote in favour of all measures proposed by his government to rein in Israeli television stations and other media that require government licences in order to operate.

● Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party has proposed a “nation-state” law that would enshrine Israel as a Jewish state. The legislation was introduced last year and is now on hold. Israel’s president is opposed to the law, which he says goes against the sentiments of Israel’s founding fathers. The country’s 20 per cent Arab minority is also strongly opposed, believing it actively discriminates against them.

● Members of the Jewish Home party have proposed the annexation of parts of the West Bank, land the Palestinians seek for an independent state together with Gaza and East Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu opposes such a move, which would likely trigger significant protest from Israel’s major Western allies.

11th Hour Deal with Far-Right Party Brings Netanyahu Back For Fourth Term as Israel’s PM

By Harriet Salem, Vice News
May 6, 2015

After 42 days of fierce negotiating, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late Wednesday night that he had finally secured the majority required to form a government, with less than two hours to go before a midnight deadline. The move has secured his fourth-term at the country’s helm.

The 11th hour coalition deal brings together the far-right Jewish Home, the fledgling center-right Kulanu party, and Netanyahu’s Likud with a total of 61 seats, in what has been billed as one of Israel’s most right-wing governments since the state was founded.

In what could be a sign of things to come, wrangling went on throughout Wednesday, as Netanyahu struggled to reach a deal with the far-right Jewish Home. The party upped its portfolio demands following the dramatic last-minute exit of outgoing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman from the negotiating table two days before the deadline to form a government.

The dramatic withdrawal of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party — which took six seats in the election — from coalition talks suddenly left Netanyahu’s chances of forming a government hanging in the balance, as the total number of MPs from parties immediately open to forming a coalition with Likud plummeted from 67 to just 61 — a crucial difference in Israel’s 120 member parliament.

The late-night preliminary deal between the Likud and Jewish Home party leaders was sealed at around 11:30pm local time, with an awkward looking handshake after the prime minister finally caved to Naftali Bennett of Jewish Home’s demands for his party to control the Justice portfolio. While the details of the agreement are due to be ironed out on Thursday, the candidate likely to take the coveted ministerial post is Ayelet Shaked, who is well-known for her extremist views and a Facebook post in which she quoted another author who referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes.”

Netanyahu’s concessions to the far-right pro-settler Jewish Home party will dismay Israel’s allies, particularly the Obama administration, which hoped for a moderating influence on the prime minister after he disavowed a two-state solution during the election campaign.

Dr. Gayil Tashir, a political scientist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the conclusion of the negotiations were unsurprising.

“Israel voted for a right-wing government and that’s what it got,” she told VICE News. “With such extremists in government, a peace process [with the Palestinians] is not even on the cards, it’s not on the agenda.”

The government’s stance on other key issues will become apparent over the next week as more ministers are formerly appointed. “Who gets these positions, particularly from the Likud party, will say a lot about how the government approaches other issues, democracy, policing, rule-of-law… and ultimately whether it is right-wing or extreme right-wing in orientation,” Tashir told VICE News.

The fragile last-minute deal is a far cry from Netanyahu’s dramatic election day victory, where a last-minute rightward swerve in the final days of campaigning saw him surge from second place in the polls to a clear six-seat lead — a result that his party members celebrated by spraying champagne and chanting “King Bibi,” a reference to the nickname given to the prime minister by both friend and foe.

With such a precarious majority held, every player in the new government wields significant power, potentially stalling reform.

“Backbenchers will be able to leverage funding or demand whatever they want, because they know that every vote counts,” explained Tashir. “But it’s a double-edged sword, parties are also less likely to leave because they know it will cause a collapse of government.”

The new government will also have to deal with the juxtaposing aims of its different factions. Moshe Kahlon’s fledgling center-right Kulanu party won 10 seats on the back of an economic platform to reduce the cost of living and housing prices, but demands by the ultra-orthodox parties to restore child benefits and payments to yeshiva students to 2013 levels will act as a budgetary block to pledged reforms. The religious parties may also lock heads with secular elements in the government when it comes to matters of state and religion.

If this wasn’t enough, Israel’s political system allows other parties to join the coalition at a later date and many Israelis already are speculating that Lieberman may even return from the wings, or that Issac Herezog’s center-left Zionist Union might be tempted aboard at a later date.

On Wednesday night, Netanyahu hinted that such additions might already be in the offing.

“61 is a good number, 61 plus is even better,” he said. “It starts with 61, we have a lot more work ahead of us.”

Others, however, are less optimistic and predict another election is not far away.

“We’ll have to see how the next six months play out,” Rafi Smith, head of Smith Consulting polling agency, told VICE News. “But with such a small majority it’s hard to see that the coalition will survive the next four years.”

Netanyahu Forms an Israeli Government, With Minutes to Spare

By Jodi Rudoren, NY Times
May 06, 2015

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel barely met the legal deadline to form a new government on Wednesday night and will start his fourth term with the slimmest of parliamentary majorities, made up of right-leaning and religious parties.

Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud Party celebrated a surprisingly strong victory in the March 17 elections after a divisive campaign, but ended up scrambling to scrape together 61 of Parliament’s 120 members into a coalition — and hold on to his premiership. He was forced to make major concessions to the more conservative Jewish Home party, and emerged weakened to lead a government that Israeli experts said was unlikely to last long or do much.

“Netanyahu simply miscalculated,” said Eytan Gilboa, a professor at Bar-Ilan University who specializes in politics and communications. “What you see here is a big political mess that, I think, shows Netanyahu has been too confident.” Of the new coalition, he added, “Nobody in his right mind believes that this will hold for even a short time.”

Mr. Netanyahu and the head of the Jewish Home, Naftali Bennett, appeared together at Israel’s Parliament building shortly before 11 p.m. to tell reporters they had sealed the deal. The two men, who have clashed frequently over politics, policy and personal matters, shook hands after two days of fierce negotiations.

“Mr. Prime Minister, we are behind you for the success of the country and the government you head,” Mr. Bennett said in comments broadcast on Israeli radio.

Mr. Netanyahu indicated that he would still try to lure other parties to the coalition to strengthen it. “I said that 61 is a good number, and that 61-plus is even better,” he said. “But it begins with 61, and we will get started. There is a great deal of work ahead of us.”

Many Israeli analysts said the last-minute deal-making and the narrow government it produced pointed to problems in Israel’s fractured political system. Ten parties split the seats in Parliament, with the largest, Likud, winning 30, a quarter of the total. The final frenzy of negotiating came after Monday’s surprise announcement that Israel’s unpredictable and ultranationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, would not join the new government.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, found himself scrambling to meet the legal deadline to form a governing coalition. “It’s more like a soap opera than serious politics,” said Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at Hebrew University.

“In every other country, if the largest party has 30 seats, this is ridiculous, this is not a victory,” he added. “In normal countries, such a result is the best loser. We have a problem with our government system and this fragmentation.”

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Bennett plan to finalize details of their agreement and sign it Thursday, and the new government is slated to be sworn in next week. Some details remain unclear, but the Likud-led coalition will include Kulanu, a new center-right faction focused on the economy; two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas; and the Jewish Home, which favors expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Mr. Bennett is expected to serve as education minister, and another Jewish Home member, Ayelet Shaked, as justice minister; both will probably sit in the security cabinet, which makes critical decisions about war and peace. Kulanu’s leader, Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud minister, will become finance minister and will also serve in the security cabinet, along with Moshe Ya’alon of Likud, who is likely to continue as defense minister. Mr. Netanyahu himself will probably double as foreign minister for now.

Mr. Netanyahu’s comments, and statements earlier Wednesday by other Likud leaders, suggested that he would soon try to lure Isaac Herzog of the center-left Zionist Union as foreign minister in a national unity government. But Mr. Herzog denounced Wednesday night’s deal as “a government of national failure.”

On Twitter, Mr. Herzog called it a “government with no responsibility, stability or governance,” and on Facebook, he said it was “the most weak, narrow and squeezable government in Israel’s history.”

With Mr. Lieberman’s late-in-the-game withdrawal, Mr. Bennett used his added leverage to demand the Justice Ministry for Ms. Shaked, stirring outrage. She is an outspoken hawk on the Palestinian issue who has described African asylum-seekers as a threat to Israel’s Jewish character and has pressed for a “nationality bill” that critics say would disenfranchise Arab citizens.

Nachman Shai, a Zionist Union lawmaker, said giving Ms. Shaked the post “would be like appointing a pyromaniac to head the fire department.” Mouin Rabbani, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, called the new Israeli government “the most extremist in its history.”

“Since this government does not pay even lip service to the charade of a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, the international community and Western powers in particular can dispense with the traditional honeymoon period,” Mr. Rabbani said in a statement circulated by the Washington-based Institute for Middle East Understanding. “If there is to be any hope for peace in the Middle East, it needs to begin with an end to Israeli impunity and by holding this government to account for its actions.”

The coalition agreements that Likud signed earlier with Kulanu, Shas and United Torah Judaism call for repealing laws passed by the last government to expand the military draft of ultra-Orthodox men and to ease the process of converting to Judaism. Each party in the coalition could veto the nationality bill and object to efforts to limit the Supreme Court’s ability to invalidate parliamentary actions.

Adding the Jewish Home will complicate things, since its modern-Orthodox constituency is often at odds with the ultra-Orthodox.

“It’s a weak government, numerically but not only numerically — they are not singing the same song,” said Tamar Hermann, a political scientist at Israel’s Open University. “The question is whether Netanyahu will be able to orchestrate them effectively.”

Noting that the prime minister had squeaked the coalition through “like Cinderella, a minute before midnight, before he turns into a pumpkin,” Professor Hermann said his ability to maneuver going forward “is nothing like what people expected the day after elections.”

The 61-member coalition is the thinnest majority in Israel in two decades, according to parliamentary records. Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a centrist former member of Parliament, called it a recipe for stagnation and dysfunction.

“Any major changes, economic or foreign policy, are not going to take place — it’s a government that will be based on an ongoing balancing act and pleasing the members without aggravating the other members too much,” Mr. Plesner said. “Either it will expand or it will collapse.”

But Avraham Diskin, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said that small governments had actually proved stable around the world because members know that “anyone who makes too many problems really directs the gun at his own head.”

“It’s going to be more cohesive” than the previous government, Professor Diskin said, referring to the fissures over expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank and the nationality bill that led to its dissolution. “I don’t think that something dramatic can be expected.”

Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, played down the drama of the approaching deadline. “I am sure no one is surprised that this negotiation took time, with all of the factions,” he told reporters at the Parliament building. “No one is surprised that it ended on time.

“But time is pressing,” he added, both to finalize the details of the coalition agreement and to officially notify President Reuven Rivlin, as required by law.

He did that in a telephone call around 11:15 p.m., in which the president suggested the prime minister catch the end of a Barcelona vs. Bayern soccer match that had been competing with coalition news on televisions across the country. “It may relieve some tension,” Mr. Rivlin said.