BY THE slimmest of margins — one vote — the Israeli Knesset (parliament) has approved the formation of a new coalition government. The leader of the far-right Yamina party, Naftali Bennet, is the Prime Minister for the next two years; after that, Yair Lapid, who heads a centre party, Yesh Atid, will take the chair. Six other parties are represented in the governing coalition.
There are three significant factors in the result. First, the Knesset vote ended Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year-long hold on the premiership. Second, it meant that, for the first time, a party representing Palestinians living inside Israel was able to join the government. And, third, the diversity of the coalition is so striking that the government is unlikely to achieve consensus enabling it to take radical decisions of the kind needed to end the Israel-Palestine dispute.
The Prime Minister in the Palestinian Authority, Mohammad Shtayyeh, echoed the sentiments expressed widely in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying: “We do not see this new government as any less bad than the previous one, and we condemn the announcements of the new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, in support of Israeli settlements.”
On the other hand, the coalition is so fragile that it requires the constant support of all its partners — not least the Ra’am party, headed by an Israeli Arab, Mansour Abbas. He is a deputy minister in the new government. As the Christian Palestinian commentator Daoud Kuttab argues in the newspaper Arab News, the precarious nature of the coalition will mean that “no major decisions are taken. This is both good and bad. It means no breakthrough in the peace process, but it also most likely excludes any major wars or settlement expansion.”
This may be true, as long as the government survives. Mr Netanyahu, now leader of the main opposition Likud party, says that he will do whatever it takes to wreck the coalition.