Netanyahu To Form New Coalition

If there is a government any more Byzantine than our own, I vote for Israel’s. On Friday, Israeli President Shimon Peres gave Benjamin Netanyahu six weeks to form a new ruling coalition. But in order to do so, the more right-leaning Netanyahu will need to reach across the aisle to the centrist Kadima Party, whose leader Tzipi Livni will almost certainly extract a promise of some sort of power sharing arrangement.

These events are being closely monitored by an Obama Administration bent on putting its own mark on the Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu is certainly no dove in Israeli-Palestinian affairs or the larger Middle East for that matter, recently signaling that he would act with or without Washington’s blessing should Iran’s nuclear ambitions reach a certain tipping point.

And considering that Israel would need to travel over Iraqi airspace controlled by the US, it should make for some interesting posturing in the months to come.