Return of Benjamin Netanyahu as head of Israel's most right-wing government

Europe 1 with AFP 12:10 p.m., December 29, 2022

After a break in the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu must return to power on Thursday at the head of the most right-wing government in the history of Israel.

Winner of the legislative elections of November 1, he must present his ministerial team to the deputies from 11:00 a.m. (09:00 GMT).

He should then obtain the confidence of Parliament, where he has the majority of seats with his allies.

Aged 73 and charged with corruption in several cases, the leader of the Likud party (right) was ousted from power in June 2021 by a motley coalition before promising a return to business by allying with the far right, a successful bet in the last elections.

Since that election, Netanyahu has held talks with ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties, including Bezalel Smotrich's "Religious Zionism" and Itamar Ben Gvir's "Jewish Force", known for their anti-Palestinian rhetoric and their positions favorable to the annexation of part of the West Bank.

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Smotrich and Ben Gvir will be respectively in charge of the settlements in the West Bank and the Israeli police, whose units also operate in this Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 by Israel.

This is for Israel "a completely new trajectory (...) It is a dream for Netanyahu's partners but a nightmare for his adversaries", underlines Yohanan Plesner, director of the Israel Democratic Institute ( IDI).

"Lust for power"

Before the Netanyahu team took office, majority parties passed laws allowing the leader of the Orthodox Shass party to sit in government despite a conviction for fraud and extending the powers of Mr Ben Gvir to the head of the police.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned of reforms aimed at reducing the power of judges and a "politicization of law enforcement" that "would deal a serious blow to the most fundamental principles of the rule of law".

And army chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said he was worried about the creation of a second ministerial post, that of Mr Smotrich, within the Defense itself to oversee the civilian management of the West Bank. .

For many analysts, Mr. Netanyahu multiplied the concessions to his partners in the hope of obtaining legal immunity or the cancellation of his trial for corruption.

"This government is the addition of Netanyahu's political weakness, given his age and his trial, and the fact that we have a new political family, linked to the revolutionary right, which we had never seen with this strength in Israel,” Denis Charbit, professor of political science at the Open University of Israel, told AFP.

Mr. Smotrich and Ben Gvir “have a very strong thirst for power and they know that what they do not obtain within three months, six months, even two years, will not take place”, in particular because of the short lifespan of Israeli governments, adds Mr. Charbit Or, these two leaders of the extreme right wish to develop colonization in the West Bank, a territory where more than 2.8 million Palestinians live and where more than 475,000 Jewish settlers already live, he said.

"Explosion" to come?

In the wake of the last Hamas/Israel war in Gaza [May 2021] and the recent violence in the West Bank, the most serious since the Second Intifada [2000 to 2005], the fear of a military escalation with the Palestinians is very present.

"There are many red lines: Al-Aqsa, annexation [of the West Bank], the status of Palestinian prisoners [in Israel]... If Ben Gvir as minister goes to Al-Aqsa, that will be a big red line to cross and it will lead to an explosion," Basem Naim, a senior Hamas politician, told AFP.

Mr. Ben Gvir has already visited the Esplanade des Mosques (Temple Mount for Jews) in recent months, a holy place at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian tensions in East Jerusalem.

Under a historic status quo, non-Muslims can visit but not pray there, but a visit by a serving Israeli minister to the site would be seen as provocation among Palestinians.

"If the government acts irresponsibly, it could cause a security crisis," said outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz.