New Israel cabinet gets off to unruly start

Benjamin Netanyahu's new cabinet was sworn in late on Thursday, amid heckling, stormy debate, and an unseemly last-minute scramble for senior posts inside his Likud party.

The new government, Israel's 34th, took almost two months to form, marking the longest coalition talks in the country's history, as Mr Netanyahu's rightwing allies - including fellow Likud members - exacted repayment after a divisive election campaign.

At the eleventh hour, voting on the new cabinet was postponed for two hours as senior Likud MPs squabbled over posts. During the session, three members of the Joint Arab List, the new unified party representing Israel's Arab minority, were ejected from the Knesset for heckling the prime minister, giving a foretaste of the vigorous opposition his new government will face.

In Israel, commentators expressed distaste over the theatrics and had doubts about how long the new government would last.

"Any citizen, and it doesn't matter from which camp, who saw what happened in the Knesset plenum, wanted to die of shame," wrote the commentator Sima Kadmon in Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily.

Mr Netanyahu's new five-party coalition will hold just a one-seat majority in the Knesset, meaning it will need to observe steely discipline on voting and attendance if it hopes to survive.

"From this moment on, we must leave disagreements outside this room and focus on good work for the citizens of Israel," said the prime minister as he convened the new cabinet's first meeting on Friday.

The Israeli leader called the election in December with the aim of solidifying his rightwing majority in the Knesset. He won a quarter of the seats for Likud, but ended up with a narrower coalition than before after alienating allies and foes alike.

During the campaign, Mr Netanyahu poached voters from rival far-right parties and ruled out a unity government with Isaac Herzog's centre-left Zionist Union - a position on which he has since backtracked.

On Thursday evening, he extended a hand to Mr Herzog, saying that the problems he had experienced in building a coalition underscored flaws in Israel's electoral system, and invited the opposition leader to join him in reforming it.

However, Mr Herzog made it clear that he had no plans to help his weakened opponent. "No respectable leader would joint the Netanyahu circus that you formed by the virtue of one seat," he said.

<

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

On Friday, the Israeli leader said that he would "continue to promote a diplomatic settlement" with the Palestinians, but the words will ring hollow after a campaign in which he said that a Palestinian state would not be formed on his watch.

US President Barack Obama, speaking at Camp David late on Thursday, said that the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian accord "seems distant now", and added: "I think it's always important for us to keep in mind what's right and what's possible."

Mr Netanyahu's new cabinet includes Miri Regev, a nationalist firebrand who once likened African migrants to "a cancer in our body", as sports and culture minister; and Ayelet Shaked, a member of the far-right Jewish Home party who wants to curb the power of non-governmental organisations and the Supreme Court, as justice minister.

The new government will - unlike Mr Netanyahu's last cabinet - include among its partners Shas and United Torah Judaism, parties representing ultra-Orthodox Jews.

This, says analysts, will deepen its conservative complexion and have implications for Israel's economy, as both parties are traditional guarantors of social welfare benefits for their largely poor supporters. On Thursday Moody's, the rating agency, estimated that the spending promises Mr Netanyahu had made to shore up his government would cost Israel's economy $2bn, or 1 per cent of gross domestic product.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation