Netanyahu has no diplomatic fig leaf

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.

Netanyahu insists on having a fig leaf in every government he forms. During his first term, 1996-99, he received "in-house coverage" from Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. Mordechai was a moderate pragmatist, who insisted on keeping an open line of communications with Washington and had an especially warm relationship with the United States. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak played the same role in Netanyahu’s second government from 2009-13, while in his third government, 2013-15, it was Hatnua head Tzipi Livni, with a dose of Lapid.

Netanyahu’s new government will include Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Liberman in his new, far-right incarnation, HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett, the ultra-Orthodox parties and Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon. There is no obvious fig leaf among them.