Down to the last minute

Coming down to the wire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last minute coalition cobbling makes top news in the Wednesday papers.

Now that Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has bolted, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the lurch with just a day to go to build a coalition, Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett is putting the screws to Netanyahu, demanding his party receive the keys to the Justice Ministry as a condition to its joining a coalition.

Netanyahu has until midnight Wednesday to form a government. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that Netanyahu and Bennett’s teams met Tuesday night without result and were set to meet again Wednesday. The Jewish Home party agreed to hand the reins of negotiating with Likud over to Bennett early on Tuesday, the paper reports, giving him the right to make any decision — “including blowing up the talks, even at the cost of the ascension of a left wing government.”

Bennett wants party No. 3 Ayelet Shaked to get the post, Haaretz reports, and seeks to up the ante for joining Netanyahu’s government. The Likud party, however, tells the paper that it’s a ploy to get Netanyahu to offer another high profile position.

“He knows how important the justice portfolio is to Netanyahu and that the chances [Netanyahu] will give it to him are slim. One can assume that it’s a demand which intends to let Bennett compromise on the foreign affairs portfolio or another senior portfolio,” a Likud source tells the paper.

Netanyahu, Israel Hayom points out, already flat out rejected Bennett’s demand for either the foreign affairs or defense portfolios. The paper notes, however, that the prime minister is equally reluctant to give Bennett the Justice Ministry because “the role of justice minister comes with automatic membership in the security cabinet by law, which means that Jewish Home will have two representatives in the cabinet should Shaked be appointed, something unacceptable to Netanyahu and to the other coalition partners, who only have one representative in the senior security forum.”

A Likud source who speaks to Haaretz lists two other reasons why Netanyahu is loath to give the Justice Ministry to Jewish Home. First, it’s the justice minister’s role to appoint the next attorney general, a sensitive position which Netanyahu prefers to assign himself. Second, Shaked is the “bayonet point” of the fight for stripping the Supreme Court of its powers. “Netanyahu has to this day avoided head-on conflict with the Supreme Court and it’s not certain he wants this headache,” the anonymous official tells the paper.

Israel Hayom says that Likud members put pressure on Jewish Home and religious Zionist leaders to convince Bennett to join Netanyahu’s government and not let opposition leader Isaac Herzog have the chance to build a governing coalition.

Liberman’s departure from Netanyahu’s prospective coalition may be yesterday’s news, but it’s still rustled Haim Shine’s jimmies. Warning that Israeli democracy, and indeed the Jewish experiment in the Land of Israel, is still young and fragile, he says that despite the fact that the people unanimously called for Netanyahu’s leadership, a right-wing self-destructive tendency threatens to unravel everything.

“Venomous assertiveness, arrogance and delirium may obstruct our ability to keep Jerusalem united, the Land of Israel built and society civilized,” he writes. “Avigdor Liberman suddenly became a top ideologue, a man who prides himself on principles. An ideologue for a moment who succeeded in raising an easy smile of disbelief on the faces of many Israelis.” Continuing his attack, he accuses Liberman of fraud in deceiving his voters by going to the opposition.

Eitan Haber writes in Yedioth Ahronoth that should there be a 61-seat government headed by Netanyahu, Israeli voters should prepare to go to the polls once more — for a third time in less than three years — because his coalition won’t last.

“It will be a matter of a few months until [voters] will be called back to the ballot, and when that happens Netanyahu will have to muster from within himself all magic tricks, juggling and political acrobatics in order to continue to hold onto the title of prime minister,” he writes.

Even if Netanyahu manages to piece together a coalition by midnight and notify President Reuven Rivlin in time, the government’s official photograph — full of smiling faces, no doubt — will only be taken next week because Rivlin is flying to Germany on Wednesday, Yedioth Ahronoth informs. It also notes that the Netanyahu government will swear in 18 ministers, as permitted by law, but that his coalition deals stipulate 22 posts. Four ministers will have to wait until after the law is changed to be sworn in, and therefore won’t appear in the official photo.