JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday put the seal on a right-leaning coalition that is expected to be sworn in later this week as Israel's new government. But it's not the kind of political alliance that he or many Israeli voters -- and certainly not the Palestinians -- had hoped to see.
Unable to entice the left-leaning Labor Party into the fold, Sharon turned to the National Religious Party, the prime patron of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the centrist secular-rights party Shinui to serve as parliamentary partners of his conservative Likud. Analysts regard such a government as unlikely to push ahead with peacemaking initiatives.
Under the Israeli system, the party that wins the most votes in a general election -- Sharon's Likud, in this case -- must join forces with enough other parties to attain a parliamentary majority if it did not win a majority on its own. The shape of the new alliance emerged over the last several days but was formalized Monday with Shinui's signing of an agreement. The National Religious Party signed Sunday.
Talks continued Monday in an attempt to win the allegiance of a few smaller parties, but if no others join, Sharon would command the slenderest possible majority in the parliament, the Knesset -- one vote. The three parties together hold 61 seats in the 120-member body. Sharon, through his coalition negotiators, announced his intent to have the new government sworn in Thursday.
Politics in Israel are rarely neat or pretty, but even by the disorderly national standard, analysts called this a problematic outcome. A coalition of such size and makeup will be vulnerable to the competing demands of partners who would be able to bring it down at will.
"This means that Ariel Sharon will be subject to the whim of not just every party in the coalition but really every member of every party. Everyone has got veto power here," said Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at Hebrew University. "It seems that Likud and Sharon were not able to translate such a large election victory into any semblance of control and stability."
The country's most respected political commentator, Nahum Barnea, wrote in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily newspaper that the new coalition looks "more like a recipe for a screaming-match TV program than a government that will pull the country out of the mire."
