What is the Mandate of new regime in Israel? By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Focused on intermittent atrocities in Palestine, Israel as a state domestic policy promotes leaders with anti-Islamic and anti-Palestine instinct and who would advance the Jewish fascist polices in Palestine, no matter which party rules in Tel Aviv. Now a face is being popped up in Israeli national politics as to head and supervise (under the general control of premier and president) the diplomatic missions of Israel.

Israeli prime minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu inked his first coalition deal with an ultra-nationalist party early Monday, in the first step towards heading a right-wing government. Netanyahu's Likud signed an agreement with the Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the controversial firebrand branded as a "racist" by critics who is due to become the foreign minister in the new government. In addition to the foreign ministry, Yisrael Beitenu will also get internal security, infrastructure, tourism and integration of new immigrants – all would help Israeli regime to cripple Palestinians further.

Netanyahu is hoping to present his government to parliament by the end of this week to avoid asking for an extension that will give him until April 3 to form a cabinet. The agreement marks the first that Netanyahu has reached since being tasked with forming a new government in the wake of a February 10 legislative election.

Netanyahu became Israel's youngest premier in 1996, presiding over a right-wing government that collapsed ahead of time three years later after small parties quit in protest of deals he signed with Palestinians under US pressure. His second time around, he wants to head a broad-based cabinet that will have a better chance of surviving the notoriously tumultuous world of Israeli politics -- a fact that a senior aide emphasised even as the deal with Lieberman was announced.

The centrist Kadima of outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the centre-left Labour of outgoing Defence Minister Ehud Barak have repeatedly rejected Netanyahu's offer to join his cabinet. Although Netanyahu's Likud got 27 seats in the February poll, one less than Livni's Kadima, the former was tasked with forming a cabinet because he has a better chance of securing the support of 61 MPs in the 120-member Knesset parliament. Right-wing parties now control 65 seats in the chamber -- 27 for Likud, 15 for Yisrael Beitenu, 11 for ultra-Orthodox Shas, and 12 split among three religious and far-right parties.

With outgoing foreign minister and the leader of Kadima party Livni refusing to make friends with unlike-minded parties and Likud policy makers, the Likud party is forming a new regime in Israel with like-minded anti-Palestine and anti-Arab leaders. Avigdor Lieberman, the former nightclub bouncer turned ultra-nationalist politician, has struck a deal with prime minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu and deal will see him handed the job of foreign minister in the coalition deal. A politician who is labelled by some as racist and who is being probed for corruption, and who once pleaded guilty to hitting a child in the face, Lieberman looks likely to score a top job in the Israeli cabinet and would even advance further to the premier’s seat in due course. Out of the possible contenders for the top most Israeli diplomat’s role, it is hard to think of something less diplomatic.

Lieberman is a hard-line supporter of Israeli efforts to colonise occupied land against international law with settlements. Last year, Lieberman said the leader of Egypt, one of the few Arab countries with which Israel shares diplomatic relations, could "go to hell". He has said Israeli-Arab politicians who meet Palestinian militants should be executed and he has reportedly called for Palestinian prisoners to be drowned in the Dead Sea. This writer has recently opined that the fundamentalist, Jewish terrorists in Israel could even be drowned in the Dead Sea.

Lieberman is an immigrant from ex-Soviet Moldova who has built his reputation on controversial statements about Israeli Arabs that have earned him monickers of "racist" and "fascist" from critics and a reputation as a needed strong hand from supporters. And he advocates the expulsion of Israeli-Arabs who show their disloyalty to Israel: Lieberman's hard-line motto during Israel's recent elections was 'no loyalty no citizenship'. Lieberman supports Palestinian independence, but with a catch: he wants to transfer heavily populated Arab areas within Israel to Palestinian sovereignty, whether their inhabitants like it or not.

Israel promotes fascist tendencies in their attitudes to Palestine and other Arabs nearby. Despite, or because, of all this, Avigdor Lieberman has become very popular in certain quarters of Israeli society. His own policies are in tune with Jewish terrorist and expansionist ethos. Yisrael Beitenu party won fifteen seats in the Israeli Knesset in the elections, making it the third largest in Israel. It was a gain for the party that looks like it will hand its leader one of the country's top jobs.

Israeli leaders appear to be too clear about their holocaust goals and follow a set of divisive guidelines and destructive policies and also make the USA and its allies support what the Israeli terror forces do in neighbourhoods. That is the tragedy of the defenseless Palestinians. Although it is a forgone conclusion about Israeli foreign policy orientations and formulations to pursue the expansionist policies with tacit support of the US-led West, including Europe and Japan, the new incumbent with conflicting and shattered views on issues of international concerns might even prove to be a friend of Arabs and Palestine if he advances the positive instincts in him as stated earlier in the media reports. But it all depends on what the new regime decides as its top policy in Palestine and Arab world and how USA reacts to Israeli new statements.

US President Barack Obama has vowed to pursue vigorously the peace talks as part of his strategy of new American policies in the region. A narrow right-wing government is likely to put Israel at odds with its main ally the United States because it will aim to put the breaks on the already hobbled peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

One of major worries of the regime now is to escape punishment for the recent holocaust in Gaza Palestine killing thousands of innocent people, including, children, women and old people and seriously injuring several more thousands. PLO under pressure from Hamas has been pressing the UN to try the criminals for the ghastly killings in Palestine. Netanyahu- Lieberman combine would make efforts to make peace with Palestinians by implementing the Arab Peace Plan. 

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Yours Sincerely,

DR. ABDUL RUFF Colachal

Columnist & Independent Researcher in World Affairs, The only Indian to have gone through entire India

South Asia.