The unity government was about to form: Likud and Labor, right and left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog.
Then Netanyahu swung to the right and instead embraced an old partner: Avigdor Liberman, head of the hard-line nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party. Liberman, formerly the foreign minister, now reportedly will replace Moshe Ya’alon as defense minister.
“If we receive a response on the issues we’ve discussed, there’s something to talk about,” Liberman said in a news conference on May 18. “If it’s true that we’ve been offered the defense portfolio, a death penalty for terrorists, pension reform and more, as I’ve heard, that’s a serious offer we can discuss.”
The addition of Yisrael Beiteinu to the government would be a boon to Netanyahu, as well as a return to the ideologically coherent right-wing coalition he headed until 2013. Before Netanyahu and Liberman reportedly came to a tentative agreement this week, Israel’s coalition held the narrowest of majorities — 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. The two-seat advantage meant, practically, that the coalition was beholden to the whims of each of its members.
The new coalition would boast 67 seats, providing an added measure of stability. With Liberman serving again as a minister, Netanyahu has reunited with a man once seen as his possible successor. Liberman served as Netanyahu’s foreign minister from 2009 to 2015, and the two ran on a victorious joint slate in the 2013 elections.
Netanyahu “needs an integrated government, a stable one,” said Bar-Ilan University political science professor Shmuel Sandler, who added that a union with Herzog could create discord, dooming the government.
Netanyahu had sought Liberman as a partner since after the most recent elections in March 2015. But Liberman had criticized Netanyahu harshly over what he saw as his tepid conduct of the 2014 Gaza war. As coalition negotiations ended last year, Liberman chose to sit in the Knesset opposition, claiming the new government would not abide his hawkish principles.
“We refused to join the 34th Netanyahu government because of the same issues of principle we’d talked about,” Liberman said in a news conference ahead of the May 18 deal.
Netanyahu had engaged in increasingly serious talks recently with the rival Labor Party. Labor chair Isaac Herzog, whose poll numbers have fallen since the 2015 elections, appeared willing if not eager to join the government. He hoped to serve as foreign minister and push Israel toward renewed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Herzog’s peace process ambitions were boosted when President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt said on May 17 that his country would “make every effort” to help the Israelis and Palestinians reach peace. But Herzog faced vocal opposition within his own party to joining the coalition. About half of his 24-member Knesset delegation criticized the move, accusing him of selling out the party and bolstering a rival. He likely will face a strong challenge in Labor’s leadership primaries, which are expected to be scheduled soon.
Now it seems Herzog is left in the cold while Israel’s government, rather than tacking to the center, becomes even more staunchly right-wing. Liberman’s appointment would mean the ouster of Ya’alon, the current defense minister, who had attempted to be a voice for moderation against critics on the government’s right.
“Today is the day he gave up on the chance to lead a great change in our future,” Herzog said of Netanyahu in a May 18 news conference. “We will not give the crazy government of Liberman and [Education Minister Naftali] Bennett a day of silence. I will unite all the forces to turn their lives into a nightmare until we replace them.”
Ya’alon drew verbal fire from far-right activists after criticizing the soldier who killed an immobilized terrorist in Hebron in March. This month, he and Netanyahu clashed after Ya’alon defended Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Yair Golan, who in a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech compared aspects of Israeli society to trends that occurred in 1930s Germany.
Liberman would be the first defense minister who has not served as an IDF chief of staff since Amir Peretz, whose 2006-2007 tenure is widely considered a failure. But though Liberman lacks Ya’alon’s experience, the pro-settler Jewish Home party, another coalition member, cheered Ya’alon’s exit, calling the imminent government (approvingly) “the most right-wing ever in Israel.”