Israeli prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu was finalizing his right-wing government yesterday, a day before presenting it to parliament amid international concerns over the future of troubled Middle East peace talks.
Netanyahu was to dish out the last portfolios in what promises to be one of the largest Cabinets in Israeli history, with officials saying it could have up to 30 ministers.
Netanyahu will present the government for a parliament vote tonight, a senior official with his Likud party said.
He will preside over a 69-seat coalition in the 120-member parliament that will lean heavily to the right and will have firebrand Avigdor Lieberman, branded by critics as a “racist” for anti-Arab diatriabes, as foreign minister.
It includes his right-wing Likud party with 27 seats, ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu with 15 seats, center-left Labor with 13 seats, ultra-Orthodox Shas with 11 seats and the far-right Jewish Home settler party with three seats.
The right-wing shift of the new government has sparked concern abroad over the future of the peace process, which Israel and the Palestinians had relaunched in November 2007 but has made little progress since.
The EU last week warned Israel of “consequences” if the new government did not commit itself to the principle of the two-state solution to the decades-old Middle East conflict.
“Relations would become very difficult indeed,” Czech Republic Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said on Friday.
The Czech Republic currently holds the EU rotating presidency.
One of the main issues is the fact that Netanyahu opposes the creation of a Palestinian state — a principle to which Israel obligated itself under the 2003 international roadmap for peace plan.
Netanyahu, who put the brakes on the Oslo peace process in his first term as prime minister in 1996 to 1999, says that economic conditions should be improved in the occupied West Bank before negotiations take place on any other issues.
But, keen not to antagonize its main ally, with US President Barack Obama vowing to vigorously pursue the hobbled peace talks, he has vowed to continue the negotiations.
“Peace ... is a common and enduring goal for all Israelis and Israeli governments, mine included. This means I will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority for peace,” Netanyahu told a Jerusalem conference on Wednesday.
“I think that the Palestinians should understand that they have in our government a partner for peace, for security, for the rapid development of the Palestinian economy,” he said.
Aware of the discontent in the international community over Netanyahu’s government, Israeli President Shimon Peres — the nation’s veteran statesman and a Nobel peace laureate — has sought to assuage the concerns.
“The new government is bound by the decisions of the preceding one,” Peres said on Sunday. “There will be a continuity and the continuation of peace negotiations.”
Peres was to travel to the Czech Republic yesterday for a one-day visit and planned to begin a media campaign after the new government is confirmed.
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