After more than two years of political stalemate, Israel has a new governmentThat was approved on Sunday by the Knesset, the country’s parliament. The new coalition, which analysts see as fragile, brings together eight parties from nearly all the political spectrum and ousts Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent 12 consecutive years as prime minister, from power. The contentious issues that initially divided the coalition should be left aside, and economic issues should be the first to be addressed by the new Israeli government, analysts say.
The new national unity government will be headed for the first two years by right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett, and for the next two years by centrist Yair Lapid, who now holds the Foreign Ministry.
“The most important thing is to understand that Bennett is not going to run the country,” says Samuel Feldberg, professor of international relations and researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. “But this coalition government, whose prime minister is, in a very innovative way, a member of Parliament from a party that is one of the smallest parties elected in the last vote,” he adds.
The new coalition has exactly 61 seats – the minimum for a majority in the 120-seat parliament – and is made up of eight parties. The largest is Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, a party that came second in the last elections, behind Netanyahu’s Likud, with 17 seats. Yamina Bennett got seven.
Feldberg stresses that it is too early to speculate on the performance of the new government. However, he believes that more complex issues opposing the parties that make up the coalition, such as the annexation of certain areas in the West Bank, for example, should be left to further resolution. “Precisely because we have a very limited and very unstable coalition, and any more radical or categorical political stance that represents the specific interests of one part of these parties can antagonize the other side,” he adds.
Proposals that cause major divisions, if submitted to Parliament, will have little chance of being passed and may even threaten to dissolve the government. Therefore, the new Israeli government should be concerned first with economic issues and the impact of the pandemic that has left 7% unemployed in Israel, according to the researcher. “The state, for the first time, is experiencing a large budget deficit. The government has been very generous in terms of supporting residents who have lost their income,” he explains.
In addition, the new government must deal with the issues of the Arab minority living in the country. “The Arab minority has been deeply neglected in the past, and they now expect compensation for their support for this coalition,” Feldberg says. This is the first time in history that an Arab party officially participates in a governing coalition in Israel.
The demands of the Arab party upon joining the coalition include investments in the continuity and improvement of the integration of this sector into Israeli society, infrastructure works, and permitting the construction of new homes for the Arab sector of the population, among other proposals for an urban area. For the first time, the Arab sector of the Israeli population has proposed supporting a new government demanding compensation for the Arab population without getting involved in Palestinian national issues.
“They have made it clear that the Palestinian Authority represents the Palestinians in the territories and that they will devote their efforts to defending the interests of the Arab population as Israeli citizens,” Feldberg said.
Palestine
Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said on Monday that the end of the Netanyahu government ended the “worst period” in the history of the conflict, but stressed that the new coalition was “as bad as” its predecessors.
Shtayyeh condemned Naftali Bennett’s support for Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. The President of the Palestinian National Authority said during a weekly meeting of his cabinet that “what is required of the new Israeli executive authority is to start work to end the occupation and end its colonial tools such as settlements.”
The government led by Shtayyeh – with limited control over parts of the occupied West Bank – has bilateral cooperation agreements with Israel under the Oslo Accords, which means it will have to negotiate with the new Israeli executive.
For its part, the Islamic movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, and last month considered a strong military escalation with Israel, yesterday, that the change in Israeli power does not change much from the political situation of the Palestinians.
Relations with Brazil
Benjamin Netanyahu, as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has established relationships with leaders around the world. “It is undeniable that Netanyahu is a very charismatic leader,” Feldberg says, citing the relationship between Israeli and former US President Donald Trump as a result of that charisma.
The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, had a close relationship with the former Israeli prime minister, but the change in power in the Middle Eastern country should not cool diplomatic relations between the two countries, which should become more realistic. expert. “I think there will be a normalization of relations with Brazil in the absence of this personal bond.”
on this monday, Bolsonaro thanks Netanyahu He wished success to Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
With information from the EFE Agency.
