The incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, was reelected during the national election on March 17. From 2013 onwards, Israel’s government was made up of the Likud – Yisrael Beiteinu coalition and three other parties, with Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, heading the Likud party. However at the end of last year, the coalition (which held only 68 seats out of the 120 in the Israeli national legislature, or Knesset) failed to hold together, and on December 2, Netanyahu dismissed two ministers and dissolved the government.
Netanyahu is a controversial figure whose hardline stance on issues such as Palestine and Iran has earned him a great deal of criticism. However, these stances are popular enough to benefit Netanyahu if he were to up the rhetoric before the election, for example, by making political use of his March address to Congress, in which he discouraged the United States from making a nuclear deal with Iran. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is both ongoing and well known. In the weeks leading to the election, Netanyahu made further controversial statements, such as his proclamation that on the election date his supporters should vote to balance the votes of Arab Israelis, who were voting “in droves.” While Netanyahu was quick to say that he meant no offence after the election, Arab leaders were unimpressed.
Furthermore, while Netanyahu and his government have generally held that they support a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue (i.e. they would theoretically agree to the creation of a Palestinian state, separate from Israel), Netanyahu backtracked on this position and said that he would not allow such a solution during his Prime Ministership. Some are suspicious that this statement was calculated to appeal to the Israeli right wing. When pressed, Netanyahu claimed that while he would prefer a two-state solution, it was not feasible under current conditions. He cited agreements made between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and said that “conditions have to change” before any steps can be made towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. In order to diffuse tension, Israel’s government agreed to release millions of dollars of tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, whose payments it had suspended for the past three months.
The White House was not happy about Netanyahu’s statements, considering that the United States has continually supported the two-state solution and has until this time been in agreement with the Israeli government on this issue. President Obama is quoted as saying that Netanyahu’s about-face makes it “hard to find a path” to serious negotiations, and declared that “the status quo is unsustainable.”
From these statements on the election, it seems that Obama and Netanyahu’s relationship is strained, although this also has to do with negotiations between the United States and Iran. While Obama’s administration is attempting to form a nuclear agreement with Iran, along with the rest of the P5+1, Netanyahu’s government has been opposing the deal at every step of the way. Netanyahu cautions that the current deal under consideration is far too lenient, and repeats his longstanding warnings about Iranian nuclear ambitions and extremism, while Obama retorts that Netanyahu does not put forward any valid alternative to the current negotiations. Within the United States, however, support and opposition to the negotiations is heavily split along partisan lines, and Netanyahu’s address to Congress was planned without White House consultation – an indication of how divisive both the agreement and Netanyahu’s policies are in America.
What Netanyahu and his Likud party intend to do after their electoral victory may not be precisely clear, but if their past actions are anything to judge by, it may be a long time before we see peace in the Middle East.
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