Israel’s new far-right agenda fuels concern

After a stint in opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to power in Israel, leading what analysts describe as the most rightwing government in the country’s history.

Senior security and law enforcement officials have already voiced concern over its direction, as have Palestinians.

“It becomes for Netanyahu’s partners a dream government,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank, said.

“And one side’s dream is the other side’s nightmare,” he said, adding: “This government is expected to take the country in a completely new trajectory.”

Mr Netanyahu, 73, who is fighting corruption allegations in court, has already served as prime minister longer than anyone in Israeli history, including a record 12year tenure from 2009 to 2021 as well as a three-year period in the late 90s.

He was ousted from power in the spring of 2021 by a motley coalition of leftists, centrists and Arab parties headed by Naftali Bennett and former TV news anchor Yair Lapid.

It didn’t take him long to come back.

Mr Netanyahu was due to present his new government to the Israeli parliament for a ratification vote on Thursday morning, local time.

Following the election on November 1, he entered into talks with ultra-Orthodox and extreme-right parties, among them Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism formation and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party.

Both have a history of inflammatory remarks about the Palestinians. They will take charge respectively of Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank, and of the Israeli police, which also operate in the territory that has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Even before the government was sworn in, the majority parties passed laws that would allow Aryeh Deri, a key ally from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, to serve as a minister despite a previous guilty plea to tax offences. They also voted to expand powers of the national security minister, a portfolio set to be handed to Ben Gvir who will have authority over the police.

The assignment comes despite Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara’s warning against the “politicisation of law enforcement”.

Israel’s ally the US has also spoken out. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the US would oppose settlement expansion as well as any bid to annex the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu is known to want to pursue settlement expansion.