Bennett, Lapid looking to Northern Ireland conflict for lessons on gluing coalition

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid are reportedly seeking to send a delegation of faction chiefs to Northern Ireland for a seminar on negotiation and conflict management so they can gain tools that will help them keeping their wobbly coalition from falling apart.

The offices of Bennett (Yamina) and Lapid (Yesh Atid), who is is set to become prime minister under a rotation agreement, recently asked the heads of Knesset factions to join bureau directors and branch managers on the trip to Belfast, where they will participate in a seminar on strategic negotiations, the Walla news site reported Sunday.

A coalition source told the website that the goal of the trip will be “to receive practical tools for mediation and resolution of disputes and disagreements.”

“This coalition is very complex and maintaining it requires constant negotiations, so that we can learn from the processes in Ireland in dealing with the daily life of the coalition,” the source said.

Both Bennett’s and Lapid’s offices confirmed the details, the report said.

Bennett leads a coalition of eight parties of diverse ideologies from the left, center, and right wing of Israeli politics that were united by a common goal of ousting the previous government. With just 61 seats out of the Knesset’s total of 120, the government has the slimmest of majorities and has faced a number of setbacks in passing legislation due to squabbling, with parties deeply divided on several key issues.

According to the report, the location for the proposed seminar was chosen so that participants can learn from experience gained in ending the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland between UK-aligned unionists and rival nationalists who wanted the territory to join with independent Ireland. A peace deal, the Good Friday Agreement, was signed in 1998.

While in Ireland, the delegations are to meet key figures who were involved in forming the eventual compromise agreement that ended the armed conflict in the country, the report said.

The trip is planned for the beginning of May, though it is still only in the early stage of planning and coalition leaders have not yet responded to the request to participate, the report said. It will be funded by outside sources but requires approval by the Knesset legal adviser.

The Knesset Ethics Committee, which ordinarily would authorize such a trip, has not met since December 2020. Efforts by Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy to convene the committee last year were blocked by opposition lawmakers.