Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touches the stones of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City on March 18, 2015.RONEN ZVULUN/Reuters
Poor Benjamin Netanyahu – it's not enough that the President of the United States is lashing out at the Israeli Prime Minister for recent antagonistic remarks about Arab voters and Palestinian states, now Israel's own President is piling on.
Just hours before President Reuven Rivlin formally tapped Mr. Netanyahu to form a new government, the Israeli head of state took the time to deliver a lecture aimed at the Prime Minister.
Upon receiving the official results of last week's election in which 72.4 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots, Mr. Rivlin welcomed the news that it was the highest turnout since 1999. "The high voter turnout is a blessing for democracy," he said. "Woe is us if we see fulfilling the democratic obligation of voting as a curse."
On election day, March 17, Mr. Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, had called on supporters of the right to hurry to the polls and "vote Likud" because Arab Israelis were voting "in droves."
It was in response to this that President Rivlin, an old-school democrat who has reached out a number of times to Israel's Arab citizens, gave his cautionary lecture. "Whoever fears the votes in the ballot boxes, will end up with stones thrown in the streets," he warned.
Later, as Mr. Netanyahu sat in a deep arm chair in the President's official residence, waiting for Mr. Rivlin to sign the papers giving the Likud leader first crack at forming a government, he cast a somewhat jaundiced eye on this man who had rained on his parade. "Et tu, Brute?" he looked to be thinking.
Nevertheless, with this formality out of the way, Mr. Netanyahu now has up to six weeks to mould a majority coalition government with at least 61 seats in the Knesset.
Why so long? You'd think it would be easy, especially since the Prime Minister's Likud party has 30 seats itself, and five other parties with a total of 37 seats have said they are willing to join a Netanyahu-led government.
The thing is, those five parties know that the PM needs pretty well every one of them to join his coalition and their support doesn't come cheaply.
With 10 seats, the new centre-right Kulanu Party will be Mr. Netanyahu's biggest coalition partner, assuming it signs on. Its leader, Moshe Kahlon, wants to be finance minister – a big ask for a new party of that size. But since this party is crucial to a majority, the PM is happy to oblige – he promised him the job a week ago already.
Besides, as Mr. Netanyahu well knows, the finance ministry is high-risk. If things in the economy don't improve, its minister will get a lot of the blame – ask Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party and the darling of the 2013 election. His 19 seats that year got him the finance job. Two years later, he has just 11 seats, a poisonous relationship with Mr. Netanyahu and will sit in opposition.
Finance is the perfect place to put a party leader who has ambitions of his own to be prime minister one day.
Next in size, with eight seats, and relative importance, is the Jewish Home party, led by dot-com millionaire Naftali Bennett, an arch supporter of Israel's controversial West Bank settlements.
Mr. Bennett, who served as industry and religious affairs minister in Mr. Netanyahu's last government, wants to be defence minister now – a really big ask. The PM can't afford to lose Mr. Bennett's eight seats but, whereas Mr. Kahlon, the likely finance minister, has options and could join a government of the centre-left led by Labour Leader Isaac Herzog, Mr. Bennett's very right-wing views rule out any coalition other than Mr. Netanyahu's.
Mr. Netanyahu also is being lobbied by Avigdor Lieberman for the defence minister's seat. Mr. Lieberman, who considers the current defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, a softie for not finishing off Hamas completely in last summer's 50-day war in Gaza, is leader of Yisrael Beitenu, a right-wing pro-settler party that ended up with only six seats in this election, down from 11 seats two years ago.
Mr. Lieberman, however, still is crucial to Mr. Netanyahu and, since he's currently a rather undiplomatic foreign minister, might well end up in defence.
In that event, as consolation, Mr. Bennett could inherit the foreign ministry.
Imagine that: Just when Israel needs to avoid further international isolation, its front bench could have Mr. Netanyahu as Prime Minister, flanked by the stridently anti-Arab Mr. Lieberman as defence minister and, as foreign minister, Mr. Bennett, leader of the most extreme right-wing party in the Knesset.
"Israel would be better off in self-imposed exile in Siberia," wrote Israeli columnist Ben Caspit this week as he mused about such an outcome.
Add to that volatile lineup the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Arye Deri, who commands seven necessary seats.
Mr. Deri has reportedly asked to be made minister of the interior. The trouble with that, however, is that Mr. Deri is a convicted felon who served two years in prison for taking bribes while interior minister in an earlier government. To have such a man, a leader of an ultra-Orthodox party no less, responsible for matters of official documents such as citizenship, identity cards, visas, marriage and birth certificates, is too dicey for many Israelis, and won't help Israel's image abroad.
Beyond ministerial demands for themselves, party leaders also seek cabinet spots for other caucus members and commitments to various policies.
Mr. Bennett, for example, insists on a written promise that no Palestinian state will be allowed to exist. Mr. Deri and the leaders of United Torah Judaism, another ultra-Orthodox party, want commitments that the government will retreat from recent legislation that drafted more religious students into military service. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lieberman strongly oppose such a retreat.
This is where the fun begins, and this is why six weeks is not an unreasonably long time in which to form a government.