Netanyahu’s far right coalition putting Israel on collision course with Washington
To close the deal on a new government, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu will need to accept demands from the far-right, which the Biden administration is likely to oppose.
Tel Aviv - When Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu won the Nov. 1 elections, his next challenge was to establish his new government. One of the main hurdles is the long list of demands by Religious Zionism party Chair Bezalel Smotrich.
Recent reports say the current standoff could be resolved this evening. At stake is Israel's relationship with the US administration and the international community at large.
Smotrich’s conditions for joining the emerging Netanyahu government would hand him control over future diplomatic/security developments in the West Bank, a situation that would torpedo Netanyahu’s relations with the White House, Pentagon and State Department. But given the circumstances that have made Netanyahu dependent on the 14 Knesset seats held by the religious Zionist bloc, he holds little sway over Israel's most radical politician ever to assume a position of power.
After convincing Smotrich to drop his demand for defense minister, a nightmarish idea that would have inevitably resulted in chaos, Netanyahu is now struggling with a new demand: to shift responsibility for the Civil Administration that governs the Palestinians in the West Bank from the Defense Ministry to the Finance Ministry under Smotrich.
