ANALYSIS: Netanyahu's relief at building coalition may be premature

By Jeff Abramowitz Mar 25, 2009, 15:48 GMT

Tel Aviv - The sigh of relief Israeli prime minister- designate Benjamin Netanyahu heaved when the Labour Party voted Tuesday night to join his emerging government may yet turn into one of despair.

With the Labour Party on board, Netanyahu now has a coalition, one which, while still containing a significant hawkish element, is not as extremist as it would have been had the left-to-centre Labour Party, and its leader, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, stayed out.

'He got the defence minister he wanted to handle the threat from Iran and the national unity government he needed to show the world that he was not a right-wing, peace-preventing fanatic,' analyst Gil Hoffman said in the Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

But at the same time, Hoffman says, what Netanyahu did not get stability.

On paper the premier-designate now has a government of 69 legislators, possibly going up to 74 if ongoing talks with other parties are successful but in reality the picture is different.

About seven of the 13 Labour Party legislators who oppose joining a Netanyahu-led coalition have intimated they may not support the government.

At least one - outspoken lawmaker Sheli Yachimovich - has said she will probably absent herself from the vote of confidence when the new government is presented.

None of the seven have said they intend leaving the party, but they are uncommitted on the amount of support they intend giving the Netanyahu government.

This leaves Netanyahu able, at best, to count on the unqualified backing of between 63 to 67 of the 120 legislators in the Knesset - a stable enough majority on paper perhaps, but not necessarily in practice.

Nor do Netanyahu's problems end with Labour legislators like outgoing Education Minister Yuli Tamir, who say their party will simply be nothing more that a 'fig leaf' for a rightist government.

One of his main coalition partners, the nationalist Yisrael Beteinu party, is said to be angered over the fact that in return for joining the coalition Labour is to receive 5 cabinet portfolios as well as a deputy ministership.

Party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who is earmarked to be foreign minister, was slated to convene his caucus to discuss options for voicing a protest.

Lieberman is not expected to demand the coalition agreement between Yisrael Beteinu and Netanyahu's Likud party be redrawn, but the issue is unlikely to improve his already-tense relations with Barak, who he has called 'the worst defence minister in Israel's history.'

Lieberman's hardline - some say racist - views have already earned him the contempt of many Labour legislators, and Netanyahu may find, as Barak found when he was premier between 1999 - 2001, that a government hosting two factions which despise each other may turn out to be short cut to new elections.

And this is before Netanyahu has to deal with members of his own Likud Party, disgruntled at the fact that because of the coalition agreements, there are not not enough ministries to satisfy the all would-be ministers, and those that remain are not the plum, prestigious portfolios.

Netanyahu's first premiership ended with defections from his coalition because of his policies, and from his party because of his leadership style, and he will have to use all his skill to ensure it does not happen again.