Israeli Prime Minister designee Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday announced that former foreign minister Tzipi Livni of the HaTnua (Movement) party will join his next government as justice minister. Thus, this is making the HaTnua the first party to join Netanyahu's coalition after the parliamentary elections on Jan. 22.
The inclusion of HaTnua, which won six seats, into the government came as a surprise to many because much of the post elections speculation has focused on the chances that the center- left Yesh Atid party under Yair Lapid with 19 mandates would be the first to join to coalition.
"Netanyahu has taken a gamble here, the fact that he made an agreement with Livni and according to reports from press he is on the verge of with Mofaz and Shas," Dr. Yehuda Ben Meir of Tel Aviv University told Xinhua on Wednesday, referring to Kadima party chairman Shaul Mofaz and the ultra-orthodox Shas party led by Eli Yishai.
"Mofaz isn't important but Shas and the other ultra-orthodox parties are, if Netanyahu makes an agreement with all of them then Netanyahu has 57 members but he doesn't have a majority," Ben Meir added.
The Knesset (parliament) has 120 seats and while Netanyahu theoretically only needs 61 mandates to have a majority government, he will most likely seek a broader and more stable coalition, that wouldn't be threatened when one party decided to leave.
A surprise move
Prof. David Nachmias of the Interdisciplinary-Center in Herzliya described the move to include Livni as the "politics of exclusion" and a way for Netanyahu to exclude not only Lapid's Yesh Atid party but also the right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi (the Jewish Home) party led by Netanyahu's former aid, Naftali Bennet.
HaBayit HaYehudi got 12 seats and it has join Yesh Atid in calling for a new draft law, sometimes referred to the Tal law.
"Netanyahu doesn't want to have HaBayit HaYehudi and Bennet in because that means that he will have to break down what he calls the historical connection with Shas and the ultra-orthodox parties, " he added.
"Bibi wants to stay in power period, he is threatened by Lapid, " Nachmias said, using a popular nickname for Netanyahu (Bibi).
One of the most unique features of the current coalition formation process is that the largest party in the Knesset actually is an alliance between Netanyahu's Likud party and the Yisrael Beiteinu party under former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, together the parties have 31 seats, yet 10 of those belong to Yisrael Beiteinu. So Likud only got two more seats than Yesh Atid hence making Lapid a serious concerned for Netanyahu.
Limited options
Ben Meir said that while the inclusion of Livni doesn't mean that neither Bennet nor Lapid would join the government, it does possess a number of problems for Netanyahu as the two parties have announced that they would either join the government together or from the opposition.
So Netanyahu would have to find some way of breaking the two up, and one thing he could do is by asking settler leaders and prominent national-religious rabbis, which are a key group of voters for HaBayit HaYehudi, to put pressure on Bennet. Or Netanyahu could urge Bennet to join by telling him that the two of them would be able to reign in any ideas by Livni that would threaten their ideologies.
If Bennet agrees to join the government then Netanyahu would be able to put together a coalition government that represents 69 members of Knesset, which isn't optional but still a majority.
Future issues
Ben Meir said that as far as Lapid joining the government there is an interesting question not ideological, since Lapid is center- left as is Livni, but more a question of principles from Lapid's point of view.
"The problem is what Netanyahu has done when he gave Livni two ministers instead of one and Netanyahu basically determined a key of one minister for each three members of Knesset and if you take that for all the other parties then you get a government with 25- 26 ministers," Ben Meir said.
Lapid has mentioned the small cabinet as a basic demand for joining the government, and while Ben Meir predicted that Lapid would be able to agree to maybe 22 ministers, 25 would definitely be too many.
However, any attempt by Netanyahu to pursued Lapid to join the government, with or without Bennet, would be futile if the media reports of Shas joining the government are true, as Shas opposes a more stringent Tal law.
If Lapid refuses to join then that would leave Netanyahu with one final option, to convince Labor leader Shelly to join the government by offering her pretty much anything she wants, but even that might not be enough as Yachimovich has stated that she won't join a Netanyahu led government. So Netanyahu definitely faces a tricky path to reamin in power.
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