Israeli kingmaker endorses Netanyahu

FAR-RIGHT politician Avigdor Lieberman endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu for Israeli prime minister yesterday, all but guaranteeing that the US-educated hawk will be the country’s next leader.

Lieberman emerged as kingmaker when Netanyahu’s Likud and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima Party, which leads the outgoing government, came out of the February 10 election deadlocked and Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party placed third. Yesterday Lieberman advised President Shimon Peres to call on Netanyahu to head a government with Kadima and Yisrael Beitenu as partners. However, Livni swiftly dismissed the idea.

“Today the foundations were laid for an extremist right-wing government under the leadership of Netanyahu,” Livni’s office quoted her as telling Kadima members. “That is not our way and there is nothing for us in such a government . . . We must be an alternative of hope and go into opposition.”

A hardline government could freeze peace talks with the Palestinians, hurt Israel’s standing in the world and place it on a possible collision course with President Barack Obama.

Lieberman made his endorsement in a meeting with Peres, who is in consultation with political parties before choosing a candidate to form a government. If Peres names Netanyahu, then Netanyahu will have six weeks to work out a deal with other parties to create a coalition.

“We need a wide government with the three big parties, Likud, Kadima and Yisrael Beiteinu,” Lieberman said. “Netanyahu will lead the government, but it will be a government of Netanyahu and Livni together.”

Livni has indicated in the past she would join a government with Netanyahu if the premiership rotates between them. So far, Netanyahu has ruled that out and, in a speech in Jerusalem yesterday, so did Lieberman.

“I don’t see any possibility for any (rotation) in the prime minister,” he told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. “Netanyahu must be prime minister.”

Lieberman has raised eyebrows around the world with his calls to make members of Israel’s Arab minority swear loyalty to the state or lose their citizenship.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian group Hamas has sent a letter addressed to the US president via a US politician visiting Gaza, the BBC has quoted a senior UN official as saying.

UN relief agency chief Karen Abu Zayd told the BBC the letter had been received by the UN and passed on. No details of the contents of the letter were revealed and it is not known if Senator John Kerry, who visited Gaza yesterday, accepted it. The US views Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, as a terrorist group and will not deal with it.