Netanyahu has no diplomatic fig leaf
The setup of the new coalition now being negotiated offers no opening for a renewed diplomatic process, leading Israel into international isolation in a matter of a year.
The current estimate is that in just a few weeks, once he finishes putting his right-wing, ultra-Orthodox coalition together, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will call Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog, inviting him to join the coalition. He’ll offer a similar invitation to Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, too. Netanyahu won’t be doing this out of love or admiration for Herzog or Lapid. He will have no choice.
Netanyahu’s fourth government, which he will be hard at work patching together over the next few weeks, will be the first in which he has no diplomatic “fig leaf” to mollify the international community in general and the Barack Obama administration in particular. His problem is that the chances of either Herzog or Lapid responding positively to his call tend toward zero. They’ll let him simmer in his own juices, become an outcast in the international community, plead like a pauper for every Security Council veto, and try to withstand the tsunami of ostracism and boycotts expected to rain down on him from Europe, all with the express approval of the United States.
