By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News -
Coalition negotiations between the parties of the so-called “change bloc” are on hold as Israel’s security situation, particularly in the southern region, worsens.
Following a barrage of some 200 rockets fired towards Jerusalem and Israel’s southern cities over the past day, potential kingmaker Mansour Abbas of the Islamist Ra’am party announced that he would not participate in coalition negotiations until tensions subside.
News site N12 reported that Abbas said he could not engage in negotiations with parties that are calling for additional aerial attacks on Gaza in response to the rocket fire. His decision points to the difficulties made up of parties holding opposing ideological views.
A critical meeting between Yemina chair Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid party head Yair Lapid, which was rumored to be the finalization of the coalition agreement, was cancelled Monday evening.
Channel 13 reported that Bennett and Lapid had been set to meet with President Reuven Rivlin late on Monday evening, to announce that they’d successfully formed a coalition, with matters including the distribution of ministerial posts already settled.
The coalition, however, needs Ra’am’s backing for its majority.
While Lapid recently gave a speech saying that the “gaps [between the parties] for a coalition agreement [were] small,” the delay could potentially spell disaster for the fragile change bloc.
Made up of disparate parties spanning from the left to the right ends of the political spectrum, not to mention anti-Zionist Arab parties, the coalition’s only unifier is its desire to unseat Netanyahu.
According to their official platforms, the parties hold radically different ideological views on almost every major issue, including the nature of the Jewish State.
Pundits speculate that a desire to vanquish Netanyahu may not provide enough glue to keep together for a long-term, stable government.
Religious Zionism MK Betzalel Smotrich called upon Bennett and New Hope party chair Gideon Sa’ar to form an emergency right-wing government with his party, Likud, and the haredi parties, on Monday.
“Put everything aside and let’s form an emergency government of the national camp today,” Smotrich tweeted. “Everything else can wait.”
Image: Adi Cohen Zedek (עדי כהן צדק), CC BY-SA 3.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons
