Right-Wing Israeli Party Expected to Join Coalition Today

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and hardline Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman are expected to sign a coalition agreement later today in a move that has roiled Israeli politics. Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who was pushed out of his job to make room for Liberman to become the defense minister, is saying his goodbyes today before his resignation takes effect this evening. The snag holding up the deal is funding for a pension program for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, that is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year. With the entry of the six-seat Yisrael Beytenu party into his coalition, Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority will rise to 67 out of 120 seats. The Prime Minister had been negotiating with the center-left Labor party, amid signals that Egypt was interested in trying to broker new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but shifted right and turned to Liberman’s party instead. Liberman has called for the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, and has threatened to assassinate leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip. A Hamas leader Fathi Hammad, said that Liberman’s threats of do not scare the movement’s leaders, saying that Hamas does not call for war, but would fight if it imposed on them. Israel and Hamas fought a war in the summer of 2014 which left more than 2000 Palestinians and 70 Israelis dead. Recently Israel uncovered two tunnels that Hamas has dug from Gaza into Israel.