Tag Archives: coalition government

Who’s who in Israel’s new patchwork coalition government

By Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s new government is a hodgepodge of political parties that had little in common other than a desire to unseat veteran right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The coalition, sworn in on Sunday, spans the far left to far right and includes for the first time a small Islamist faction representing Israel’s Arab minority.

It is expected to focus mostly on economic and social issues rather than risk exposing internal rifts by trying to address major diplomatic matters such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here are the people who are leading the new government:

NAFTALI BENNETT – PRIME MINISTER

Bennett leads the ultranationalist Yamina (Rightwards) party that champions Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He made a fortune in Israeli high-tech before entering politics in 2013. Bennett, 49, served in previous Netanyahu-led governments, most recently as defense minister.

Now he says he joined with opponents to save the country from political turmoil that could otherwise have led to a fifth election in just over two years. A plan he has floated to annex much of the West Bank seems unfeasible, given his new partners. He opposes the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Under the coalition deal, Bennett will serve as prime minister for two years whereupon he is to be replaced by Yair Lapid. He is Israel’s first leader to wear a kippah, a skullcap worn by Orthodox Jews.

YAIR LAPID – FOREIGN MINISTER

Lapid heads the centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party and was the architect behind the new government. His party is the biggest in the coalition but he agreed to share power with Bennett to secure a parliamentary majority.

Lapid, 57, whose late father was a justice minister in a previous governing coalition, quit his job as a TV anchor in 2012 and formed his own party, running on a promise to ease financial pressures on the middle-class.

He also seeks to end many of the state-funded privileges enjoyed by ultra-Orthodox Jews, a long-running source of grievance to many secular Israelis.

Lapid initially served as finance minister before moving to the opposition, which he led until Sunday. He will serve as foreign minister for two years and then take over as prime minister until the end of the government. If it lasts that long.

BENNY GANTZ – DEFENCE MINISTER

Just two years ago Gantz, a former armed forces chief of staff heading the centrist Blue and White party, was the opposition’s best hope to unseat Netanyahu.

But he agreed to join Netanyahu in a “unity” government, a decision that angered many of his supporters. Gantz, 62, is in the new coalition, remaining as defense minister.

AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN – FINANCE MINISTER

A far-right immigrant from Moldova who lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Lieberman, 63, has been a political wildcard over the past decade. He has joined Netanyahu governments, including as defense minister, but also quit.

As finance minister he will have to rein in a budget deficit that ballooned during the coronavirus crisis.

He has also said he will try to change the status quo between the government and Israel’s politically powerful ultra-Orthodox minority, which was a mainstay of Netanyahu’s outgoing government.

The ultra-Orthodox community has low participation rates in the workforce and relies heavily on government handouts while focusing on religious studies. Lieberman has said he will work to integrate them more into the economy.

GIDEON SAAR – JUSTICE MINISTER

Saar was Netanyahu’s main rival within Likud, but Netanyahu did his best to keep him out of the spotlight and away from the highest-level portfolios. Frustrated, Saar launched an ultimately failed leadership bid then spun off his own party.

As head of the New Hope party, Saar, 54, will serve as justice minister, where he will oversee the legal system and become a member of the security cabinet.

MANSOUR ABBAS

Abbas’s small United Arab List is the first party in an Israeli government to be drawn from Israel’s 21% Arab minority – Palestinian by culture and heritage, but Israeli by citizenship.

He split with other Arab politicians who prefer to remain outside government and cast aside differences with Bennett and other right-wingers to tip the scales against Netanyahu.

Abbas, 47, is expected to serve as a deputy minister in the prime minister’s office. He aims to negotiate a big increase in government spending in Arab towns and villages.

But his presence is a potentially destabilizing factor. He has been criticized by Palestinians for agreeing to support an Israeli government while Israel continues to occupy territories it captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek a state. Addressing these tensions, Abbas told the Italian daily La Repubblica on Friday: “There will be difficult decisions to be made, including security decisions. We have to juggle our identity as Palestinian Arabs and citizens of the State of Israel, between civil and nationalistic aspects.”

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; additional reporting by Giulia Segreti in Rome; editing by Stephen Farrell and Mark Heinrich)

‘King Bibi’ fights for his political life in Israeli election

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Twenty years after Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term as Israel’s prime minister ended, the man hailed by supporters as “King Bibi” is again fighting for his political survival in a rerun election.

Opinion polls predict a close race when Israel goes to the polls on Tuesday, five months after an inconclusive election in which Netanyahu declared himself the winner but failed to put together a coalition government.

“A Likud victory is possible but it’s hanging by a thread,” said Abraham Diskin, political science professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, referring to Netanyahu’s right-wing party.

An end to the Netanyahu era after his 10 successive years in power would be unlikely to lead to a dramatic change in Israel’s policy on hotly disputed issues in a peace process with the Palestinians that collapsed five years ago.

Relations with the United States would be likely to remain on track, despite Netanyahu’s close relationship with President Donald Trump.

Likud is running neck-and-neck with the centrist Blue and White party led by former armed forces chief Benny Gantz, who has focused heavily on looming corruption charges Netanyahu faces.

But Netanyahu’s political fate could ultimately end up in the hands of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu headed by former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a potential kingmaker in the coalition-building certain to follow the vote.

After the election in April, Lieberman blocked Netanyahu’s attempts to form a coalition, citing differences with the prime minister’s ultra-Orthodox allies. Opinion polls indicate Yisrael Beitenu will emerge stronger in the new ballot.

ANNEXATION

Netanyahu has campaigned hard to avoid losing power, as he did in 1999 against then-Labour party leader Ehud Barak, appearing in hours of live video question-and-answer sessions on Facebook in recent weeks and dominating the news in Israel.

In a step this week that alarmed Palestinian and other Arab leaders but delighted his core right-wing constituency, Netanyahu announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

It was, Israeli political commentators said, a clear attempt to draw votes away from far-right parties.

Netanyahu hammered home a get-out-the-vote message: Applying Israeli sovereignty to the valley, which Palestinians want as part of a future state, will happen only if Likud emerges from the election as the biggest party in the Knesset (parliament).

In Israel, votes are cast for a party’s list of Knesset candidates. Since no party has ever won a majority of seats on its own, Israel has always been ruled by coalitions, making post-election political bargaining key to determining the ultimate winner.

Netanyahu has burnished a statesman’s image during the campaign, visiting Britain last week for talks with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and meeting President Vladimir Putin in Russia on Thursday.

Netanyahu has also showcased his relationship with Trump, featuring posters in which both are shaking hands. But there has been no sign from Trump of a “grand gesture” that could bolster Netanyahu as a candidate.

Shortly before the last election, with the prime minister at his side, Trump signed a proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israel captured the strategic area in a 1967 war and annexed it in 1981, moves not accepted by most world powers, who deem it to be occupied Syrian territory.

“NATIONAL UNITY”

The line-up of challengers this time is similar to the one Netanyahu faced in the previous election, with Blue and White his biggest threat.

Blue and White has said it would “strengthen the settlement blocs” in the West Bank, with the Jordan Valley as Israel’s “eastern security border”. But that falls short of an outright commitment to annex the valley, and a party spokesman said a Blue and White-led government would “maintain an open channel” for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Most of the international community regards the Israeli settlements as illegal, a view that Israel disputes.

The spokesman said the party would seek “the return of bipartisanship to Israel-U.S. relations”, a reference to Netanyahu’s close ties with Trump and his Republican party and sharp differences with the Democrats over issues such as Iran’s nuclear program and Middle East peacemaking.

After an election in Israel, its president gauges, following consultations with all political parties that won parliamentary seats, which legislator stands the best chance of forming a government.

Both Netanyahu and Gantz hope to be tapped, but a photo finish would complicate the picture.

A “national unity” government could avoid or resolve a stalemate if a Likud-led right-wing coalition or a Blue and White-led center-left alliance prove impossible.

Gantz has said his party would not join a government with Netanyahu in it, citing the prime minister’s legal troubles.

If a partnership with Gantz is the only way to stay out of the backbenches, prominent Likud members could try to topple Netanyahu as party leader, some political analysts have said.

Blue and White tied with Likud on 35 seats in the April election, and Gantz is seen by some voters as “Mr Clean”.

“His low-key style and relative ineloquence are for many a modest man’s refreshing antitheses to Bibi’s perceived bluster and soloism. Gantz is seen as balanced, cautious and pragmatic,” said Amotz Asa-El, a research fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute.

Two weeks after the election, Israel’s attorney-general will hold a pre-trial hearing in which Netanyahu can argue against his announced intention to file fraud and bribery charges against him in the corruption investigations.

Netanyahu, who has denied any wrongdoing, has said he will not quit as prime minister if indicted, and there is no legal obligation to do so. Allies have said they will press parliament to grant Netanyahu, as a member of the body, immunity from prosecution.

After election night, it could all come down to Yisrael Beitenu’s Lieberman, at odds with Netanyahu’s traditional ultra-Orthodox partners over military conscription exemptions for Jewish seminary students.

Lieberman, whose party is projected to double its April Knesset seat tally to 10, has said Yisrael Beitenu will not join up with a Netanyahu administration after Tuesday’s vote if it includes the religious factions.

Netanyahu’s annexation plans: https://graphics.reuters.com/ISRAEL-ELECTION/0100B2981B3/ISRAEL-ELECTION.jpg

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

U.S. peace plan conference is blip on Israel’s radar as political, Iran crises swirl

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A U.S.-led conference in Bahrain designed to drum up investment in the Palestinian economy and pave a path to peace with Israel has gone largely unremarked by Israelis preoccupied with a political crisis and their arch-foe Iran.

Palestinians, who view the Trump administration as biased towards Israel, boycotted this week’s meeting in Manama.

It was also held without an official Israeli delegation.

Organizers said privately this was due to worry about a further dent to the event’s credibility after an election in Israel in April election failed to produced a new coalition government.

FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sits with his ministers and former Israel's Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the plenum at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sits with his ministers and former Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem May 29, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing proliferating challengers in a new election due in September, and beset by corruption scandals, the hazier-than-ever peacemaking horizon with the Palestinians drew scant discussion in Israeli media.

Economy Minister Eli Cohen went as far as to suggest that Bahrain may have closed the door on further diplomacy.

“We saw that, even in an economic conference where the Palestinians were meant to come and get money, to come and get tools and inducements, to come and develop their economy, they did not come,” he told Israel’s Reshet 13 TV.

“We see, really, that they do not want a peace accord. They simply don’t want us here…Again, the Palestinians’ true face has been exposed.”

The Palestinians, who have shunned the United States since it recognized disputed Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017, suspected the conference sought to lure them into surrendering their statehood goal in return for global financial relief.

It is not clear whether a peace plan promised by the Trump administration will call for a “two-state solution” sought by the Palestinian Authority and backed internationally, which involves creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Netanyahu voiced conditional acceptance in 2009 of a future demilitarized Palestinian state. He has since said its creation would not happen on his watch and that he plans to annex some Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, communities many countries view as illegal.

Stalled since 2014, peacemaking has been on a backburner for some Israelis, while others feel a need to work for coexistence.

FILE PHOTO: White House senior adviser Jared Kushner speaks at the "Peace to Prosperity" conference in Manama, Bahrain, June 25, 2019. Peace to Prosperity Workshop/Handout via REUTERS

FILE PHOTO: White House senior adviser Jared Kushner speaks at the “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Manama, Bahrain, June 25, 2019. Peace to Prosperity Workshop/Handout via REUTERS

“This is a matter that’s important to me. We need an end to this situation,” said Jerusalem chef Israel Bachar, 45.

“It’s a little odd that the Americans held this (Bahrain) conference without convening the two main parties involved. I don’t think it’s helpful to try to impose things from outside.”

Netanyahu described the Bahrain gathering as part of a U.S. effort “to bring about a better future and solve the region’s problems”.

Two days before it opened, he toured the strategic Jordan Valley, the eastern-most part of the West Bank that borders Jordan, with U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and said Israel must retain a presence there in any peace deal.

Israeli journalists were at Bahrain, a rarity for a Gulf state that does not formally recognize Israel. The resulting coverage focused as much on wider Israeli-Arab contacts and Bahrain’s tiny Jewish community as on the Palestinian no-shows.

Cohen, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said Arab delegates saw Bahrain as a chance to close ranks with Israel on bilateral commerce and in the face of a common adversary.

“This was, in fact, a regional summit against Iran,” he said. “We see here a coalition in the Middle East…They (Arab powers) understand that their security threat is Iran.”

Washington and Tehran have exchanged threats and heated rhetoric in recent weeks, with a U.S. increasing sanctions on Iran and Iranian forces shooting down a U.S. drone in the Gulf.

The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University gave a cautious welcome to the initiatives announced in Manama, including a global investment fund for the Palestinians. But it said these could not trump statecraft.

“While a willingness to earmark huge investments in economy, infrastructure, education, health, and welfare in the West Bank and Gaza Strip should be good news…what is also required is a political plan that is both creative and beneficial to the Palestinians,” INSS scholars Tomer Fadlon and Sason Hadad wrote.

Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. It pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005 and Hamas Islamists, who have called for Israel’s destruction, now rule the enclave. Palestinians seek both territories for a future state.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Angus MacSwan)