Netanyahu struggling to form coalition before deadline

This story originally appeared on The Media Line.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scrambling to form a majority coalition before a Thursday deadline after his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced he is resigning his post immediately and his party will not be joining the coalition.

If all of the other potential coalition partners join, that will leave Netanyahu with a coalition of 61 seats: formed from an alliance of right-wing factions and parties representing Israel’s ultra-Orthodox communities. That means a razor-thin majority in a parliament made up of 120 seats, the very minimum required for a majority to pass legislation.

A single member of the coalition can now exert enough influence over the government to block legislation. In particular it is believed that the state budget, so critical to the financial reforms desired by incoming Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, will fall victim to pressure. A government unable to pass legislation is likely to become mired in bickering and negotiations over each bill it attempts to ratify. However, minority governments are not unheard of in Israeli politics, and indeed Netanyahu ended his 1996-1999 term as the head of a minority government.

There has been some speculation that Netanyahu might attempt to form a broader unity government with the inclusion of Isaac Herzog and his Zionist Union Party with 24 seats, but the Labor politician’s language in recent days appeared to show that this will not happen, Gabriel Sheffer, professor at the Hebrew University’s Department of Political Science, told The Media Line.

“Netanyahu is a determined politician, he wants to remain the Prime Minister for many years,” said Sheffer, explaining that he thought it likely that Netanyahu would find a way to run the government with just 61 seats.

“Another election is unlikely in the immediate future. The government might last as much as a year,” Sheffer said, suggesting that Kahlon or Naftali Bennett, two large personalities expected to join the government who are reported to have frayed relationships with the Prime Minister, might at a later date threaten the government with collapse.

“The chances of the present government lasting out its lifetime until late 2019 are not 0%,” says Abraham Diskin, also of the Department of Political Science at Hebrew University, who said he believed people exaggerate the fragility of Israeli governments.

Within two days Netanyahu is likely to form a government of 61 seats, something that could have been expected from the start of the coalition negotiations, said Diskin. He also added that Lieberman’s recent action, based on his history of confrontations with Prime Minister, was no real surprise.

As to the question of how a government will function with such a small majority, Diskin said that it is a fallacy to believe that a small coalition is inherently unstable.

“A member can collapse the government by committing collective suicide, but if you were into suicide then why would you be in the game?” The fewer the number of parties making up the government, the smaller the number of ideologies and agendas that have to be amalgamated within, Diskin explained.

Added to this is the fact that Likud, with 30 seats, has a stronger percentage within the government than last term. Even if the previous government’s majority – 68 seats – was larger, Netanyahu could find it easier to exert his influence over his coalition partners during his fourth term as Prime Minister.