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Netanyahu coalition's days may be numbered

The natural gas fiasco, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to withdraw his proposed outline from a Knesset vote, is yet another sign of the fragility of his coalition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) sits next to his Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (L) during a swearing-in ceremony at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem May 14, 2015. Netanyahu's new rightist coalition government, hobbled from the outset by its razor-thin parliamentary majority, was sworn in late on Thursday amid wrangling within his Likud party over cabinet posts. Picture taken May 14, 2015. REUETRS/Jim Hollander/Pool - RTX1D2SJ
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Former Finance Minister Yair Lapid has been saying in recent private conversations that it is by no means far-fetched to predict that the fourth Netanyahu government will not last even a year and that elections will be pushed up to the winter of 2016.

On the face of it, this is, of course, wishful thinking on the part of someone whose party's electoral strength shrank from 19 to 12 Knesset seats in the last elections and is forced to constantly fight for a front-row seat on the crowded opposition benches. But the assessment by the Yesh Atid chairman of a fragile government was bolstered this past week by the battle over the future allocation of proceeds from the harvesting of Israel’s offshore natural gas resources.

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