Tel Aviv - The sigh of relief Israeli prime minister-
designate Benjamin Netanyahu heaved when the Labour Party voted
Tuesday night to join his emerging government may yet turn into one
of despair.
With the Labour Party on board, Netanyahu now has a coalition, one
which, while still containing a significant hawkish element, is not
as extremist as it would have been had the left-to-centre Labour
Party, and its leader, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, stayed out.
'He got the defence minister he wanted to handle the threat from
Iran and the national unity government he needed to show the world
that he was not a right-wing, peace-preventing fanatic,' analyst Gil
Hoffman said in the Jerusalem Post Wednesday.
But at the same time, Hoffman says, what Netanyahu did not get
stability.
On paper the premier-designate now has a government of 69
legislators, possibly going up to 74 if ongoing talks with other
parties are successful but in reality the picture is different.
About seven of the 13 Labour Party legislators who oppose joining
a Netanyahu-led coalition have intimated they may not support the
government.
At least one - outspoken lawmaker Sheli Yachimovich - has said she
will probably absent herself from the vote of confidence when the new
government is presented.
None of the seven have said they intend leaving the party, but
they are uncommitted on the amount of support they intend giving the
Netanyahu government.
This leaves Netanyahu able, at best, to count on the unqualified
backing of between 63 to 67 of the 120 legislators in the Knesset - a
stable enough majority on paper perhaps, but not necessarily in
practice.
Nor do Netanyahu's problems end with Labour legislators like
outgoing Education Minister Yuli Tamir, who say their party will
simply be nothing more that a 'fig leaf' for a rightist government.
One of his main coalition partners, the nationalist Yisrael
Beteinu party, is said to be angered over the fact that in return for
joining the coalition Labour is to receive 5 cabinet portfolios as
well as a deputy ministership.
Party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who is earmarked to be foreign
minister, was slated to convene his caucus to discuss options for
voicing a protest.
Lieberman is not expected to demand the coalition agreement
between Yisrael Beteinu and Netanyahu's Likud party be redrawn, but
the issue is unlikely to improve his already-tense relations with
Barak, who he has called 'the worst defence minister in Israel's
history.'
Lieberman's hardline - some say racist - views have already earned
him the contempt of many Labour legislators, and Netanyahu may find,
as Barak found when he was premier between 1999 - 2001, that a
government hosting two factions which despise each other may turn out
to be short cut to new elections.
And this is before Netanyahu has to deal with members of his own
Likud Party, disgruntled at the fact that because of the coalition
agreements, there are not not enough ministries to satisfy the all
would-be ministers, and those that remain are not the plum,
prestigious portfolios.
Netanyahu's first premiership ended with defections from his
coalition because of his policies, and from his party because of his
leadership style, and he will have to use all his skill to ensure it
does not happen again.
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