After prolonged haggling, as is often the case with Israeli politics, Israel's ruling party, the Likud, and the main opposition party, Labour, have agreed to form what seems to be a narrow-based coalition regime.
Israeli commentators have used a variety of epithets to describe the new regime, including "expediency marriage" and "life-saver" for Zionist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, especially for his unilateral plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip which is fiercely opposed by wide sectors of the Likud as well as by most religious and right-wing parties.
Sharon had hoped to include the ultra-religious party, Shas, into the coalition in order to give it a stronger and more permanent parliamentary majority. However, an earlier edict by the party's spiritual mentor, Ovadia Yosef against the proposed withdrawal from Gaza blocked its entry into the regime, probably pending a change of circumstances that could allow Yosef to annul his edict.
Meanwhile, Sharon is still trying hard to woo another ultra-orthodox party to his regime. The party, Yahdut H'atorah, (previously Agudat Yisrael), however, is demanding a hefty price for supporting the Gaza plan, namely a hefty sum of money for its religious and educational institutions as well as several ministerial posts.
Following the Likud-Labour agreement earlier this week, an unexpected hurdle appeared when the current deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert utterly refused to resign from his post in order to allow the appointment of Labour Party leader Shimon Peres as deputy prime minister pursuant the coalition agreement.
Olmert was adamant in his refusal and Peres was equally adamant in his insistence on becoming deputy prime minister. Eventually, the saga ended when the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, rather hastily approved a new law allowing the prime minister to appoint two deputies rather than one.
According to the coalition agreement between Israel's two largest parties, Labour will obtain 8 ministerial posts, including three posts without portfolio.
None of the critical ministries, however, will go to Labour, including the Foreign, Defense and Finance ministries which will remain in Likud's hands.
The new coalition regime will have a Knesset majority of some 64 seats out of the 120- seat assembly. Likud and Labour leaders also hope that Arab parties and the newly formed center-left party known as Yahad will provide the regime with an additional "safety net" during motions of non-confidence expected to be filed from time to time by the religious and right-wing secular parties opposed to the policies of the regime, especially the planned withdrawal from Gaza.
In fact, this opposition has already begun to assume vociferous overtones this week when one of the prominent leaders of the Jewish settler movement, Pinhas Walerstein, called on his supporters to "proactively" oppose and thwart the Gaza plan, even at the risk of going to jail.
While Walerstein's call was widely denounced by the regime and its judicial establishment, prominent rabbis in Israel, especially those representing religious Zionism, displayed clear support for Walerstein.
Acting on instructions from Yesha, the council of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many settlers in the Strip wore orange stars of David, similar to those Jews were obliged to wear in Nazi Germany more than sixty years ago.
The analogy was too much for the Anti-Defamation League, which demanded an immediate end to the "disgusting feat." A statement by the league argued that wearing orange stars of David effectively cheapens and trivializes the holocaust.
However, settler leaders rejected ADL criticism, arguing that the "extirpation of Jews from their land" amounted to a new holocaust. The mainly Talmudic and extremely racist settlers consider the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as large parts of the Arab world, as parts of the Biblical promised land.