21 February,2009 01:06 PM IST | | Agencies
Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to his moderate rivals yesterday to join him after the hard-liner was formally tapped to put together Israel's next ruling coalition - an alliance that would dilute the power of nationalists bent on derailing Mideast peace talks.
Netanyahu urged rival Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the governing Kadima Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party to join his government.
"I call on the members of all the factions... to set politics aside and put the good of the nation at the centre," Netanyahu said during a low-key ceremony at the president's residence in Jerusalem.
Yesterday's decision by Israel's ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, to tap Netanyahu ended days of speculation and gave Netanyahu six weeks to put together a ruling coalition.
Peres had been meeting with political leaders as he decided which candidate would be given the task of cobbling together a new coalition in the aftermath of Israel's national election last week.
The choice of Netanyahu was cemented on Thursday when Avigdor Lieberman, who heads the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, endorsed him.
Lieberman's party, which based its campaign on requiring Israel's Arab citizens to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship, came in third place in the February 10 election, after Kadima and Netanyahu's Likud. That essentially allowed him to determine whether Netanyahu or Livni would be able to muster the backing of a majority in parliament.
Emerging from her meeting with Peres, Livni said she would not join a hard-line government and was prepared to sit in the opposition "if necessary".
With Livni out, Netanyahu might have little choice but to forge a coalition with nationalist and religious parties opposed to peacemaking with the Palestinians and Israel's other Arab neighbors.
This could set Israel on a collision course with the US, the Jewish state's top international patron, and its new president, who has vowed to make Mideast peace a top priority. Netanyahu's hold on power would be more tenuous in a narrow coalition of rightists, where his allies could bring down the government in the face of any concession for peace.
Putting together a broad, centrist government would be a tall order for Netanyahu, however.
As the political wrangling in Israel gained momentum, sporadic violence continued in Gaza in the absence of a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
