Netanyahu puts together coalition of extremists

New Israeli government will continue building on the West Bank with its creeping annexation policy

The appalling Benjamin Netanyahu has just managed to cobble together a random collection of extremists to form a new Israeli government. Other than their clear hatred of all things Palestinian, this ill-managed collection of parties does not have a natural common agenda and with a majority of just one seat the new coalition is expected to govern with considerable tension. But if this right-wing government is overtly anti-Arab, it is not at all clear that the leftist Labour-Kadima alliance would have behaved any differently. It might have managed more emollient rhetoric and sound better, but its deeds would be very similar to Netanyahu’s.

At the last minute, Naftali Bennett, leader of Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) persuaded Netanyahu to give him the justice ministry in return for joining the coalition. Bennett opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state and consequently has wide support from the most radical of the colonists in the West Bank, and he has frequently called for the annexation of parts of the Occupied Territories.

Netanyahu was already in agreement with the centrist Kulanu and two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, and the arrival of Bayit Yehudi means that the new government will have a vicious and consistent policy of creeping annexation of the West Bank.

This means that the two-state solution is becoming increasingly difficult to implement, because the continual building on the ground makes it impossible. This means that Israel’s miserable relations with the Palestinians cannot get better and it remains to be seen if the pusillanimous Obama administration will take action and reign in its rogue ally.