planet earth looks blue

Ehud Barak’s Labor Party has officially joined Netanyahu’s coalition.  The Labor Party has been split over the decision, not wanting to become a token left-centrist part of the new more conservative Israel government, which is still in the works.  57% voted to join on Tuesday, which will give Netanyahu’s government a softer face that will ideally engender more support from President Obama.  Netanyahu needed Labor to balance out his coalition, which has already enlisted the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu Party ( giving its leader, Lieberman the post of foreign minister) as well as the Orthodox Jewish Shas party.  Tzipi Livni’s party, Kadima will not join unless her requests are met - a commitment to Palestinian statehood and a rotation government, putting her as Prime Minister for part of the term (her party won the majority of seats in the election).

Barak believes that his party and ideals will balance the right-wing government, that he will have an active voice in affairs.  He will continue in his post as Defense Minister, and represent the cause of possible Palestinian statehood and head the push towards a sustainable peace.  Ironically, he is the man that led the invasion into Gaza just a few months ago.

So is there hope with the new right-of-center Israel administration?  Likud and Labor promise to abide by all international agreements that Israel has made in the past, including an agreement with the United States under the Bush administration to pull back on Jewish colonization of the West Bank.  The former centrist government made no move to do this, and in fact colonization only continued.  Can a more nationalist, conservative, hawkish government somehow miraculously make greater strides towards peace?  Logically, it doesn’t seem likely, leaving a fragile situation to depend on limited verbal intentions.  Netanyahu has said he is interested in working on the Palestinian economy, not on Palestinian statehood, something that the Palestinians desperately want on the table.  Meanwhile the Palestinians themselves are also trying to figure out their own power structure.  The different Palestinian factions will conduct talks in Cairo in April to try and develop their own consistent government. What a strange mirror-phenomena of the Palestinians and the Israelites.