The newly re-elected Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, presented his new government coalition to the Knesset on Thursday, December 29, after two months of negotiations. Composed of six parties, the extreme right and the ultra-Orthodox are overrepresented there, and women are excluded. He is already speaking out for reinforced colonization in the West Bank.
This government will be “stable” and will go “to the end of its mandate”, promised the 73-year-old politician, back on his throne after a series of political setbacks and legal disputes – he was indicted for corruption in various affairs – removing him from power between June 2021 and December 2022. “Bibi”, who has already been Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999 then from 2009 to 2021, is therefore beginning his third reign at the head of the government.
The new coalition, invested by the vote of 63 deputies out of 120 in the Knesset, is mainly dominated by the extreme right. It is made up of Netanyahu’s party, the Likud (right), as well as two ultra-Orthodox and three far-right parties. Among them, Bezalel Smotrich’s “Religious Zionism” and Itamar Ben Gvir’s “Jewish Power” parties, known for their anti-Palestinian remarks and their positions favorable to the annexation of part of the West Bank, and “Noam” of Avi Maoz, an openly anti-LGBTQ group.
Itamar Ben Gvir, convicted many times for incitement to hatred, is appointed head of the Ministry of Public Security, which gives him greater control of the police. Yoav Gallant, a former senior officer, member of Likud and close to the pro-colonization movement in the occupied West Bank, obtains the Defense. Bezalel Smotrich, religious ultranationalist, inherits Finances for a time, and will govern the Israeli colonies in the occupied territories.
The Likud seems almost sidelined in the distribution of roles within this coalition. For international observers, Benjamin Netanyahu is in a situation of political weakness. He multiplied the concessions to his partners in the hope of obtaining legal immunity or the cancellation of his trial for corruption.
In a statement presented the day before the inauguration of the coalition, the Likud affirms its new objectives for the government. “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will encourage and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel – in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, in Judea and Samaria (Occupied West Bank, Editor’s note)”, says the party.
In contrast to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the 1990s, which he helped to bury, Benjamin Netanyahu advocates a vision of Israel as a “Jewish state” with borders extending to Jordan. In the occupied West Bank where 2.9 million Palestinians live, Israeli settlements have exceeded 475,000 inhabitants – an increase of 50% – during the last decade that Benjamin Netanyahu was in power. An increased presence that threatens the creation of a viable Palestinian state, according to the UN.
In reaction to the composition of this coalition, hundreds of people, some of whom were flying the rainbow flag or showing sympathy for the Palestinians, were already demonstrating this Thursday in front of Parliament. Several voices have already been raised within the Likud before the power given to far-right parties.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara also said she feared reforms reducing the power of judges and a “politicization of law enforcement” which “would deal a serious blow to the most fundamental principles of the rule of law”.
