Netanyahu surprise gives Israel grand coalition

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a unity government on Tuesday in a surprise move that could give him a freer hand to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and seek peace with the Palestinians.   

The coalition deal, negotiated secretly over the past days and sealed at a private meeting overnight, means the centrist Kadima party will join Netanyahu's rightist coalition, creating a majority with 94 of parliament's 120 seats.   

The alliance, which replaces plans announced just two days earlier for a snap election in September, will be one of the biggest in Israel's history - though an opinion poll found only 39 percent of Israelis supported it and 34 percent were opposed.   

"This government is good for security, good for the economy and good for the people of Israel," Netanyahu told a joint news conference with Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, a former defense chief who began secret talks on a deal last week.   

The new coalition would, Netanyahu said, focus on redrafting the budget, on electoral reform and on what he called sharing out military duties across the population - his religious coalition partners had unsettled the government by opposing plans to end exemptions from the draft for ultra-Orthodox Jews.   

Among other goals of the new government would, the prime minister said, be "to try to advance a responsible peace process" with the Palestinians: "Not all has been agreed but we have a very strong basis for continued action," he said, urging Palestinians to "come sit with us for serious negotiations".  

Peace talks have been suspended for 18 months in a dispute over Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and Palestinians say they cannot resume unless such construction is frozen. Netanyahu has called for talks without preconditions.   

The Palestinians responded cautiously.  

In an interview with Reuters, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it was too soon to comment directly on the new Israeli coalition. He was waiting for a reply from Netanyahu to a letter he sent last month and he was ready to engage if the Israeli leader proposed "anything promising or positive".   

A spokesman for Abbas called on Israel to "use the opportunity provided by the expansion of its coalition government" to expedite a peace accord, demanding Israel halt building settlements on land the Palestinians want for a state.   

"The new coalition government needs to be a coalition of peace and not a coalition for war," Nabil Abu Rdainah said.   

The new coalition accord says the new administration will "work towards the resumption of the peace process and promoting talks with the Palestinian Authority".   

But it also noted "the importance of maintaining defensible borders", a phrase Netanyahu has used in the past to deflect Palestinian demands for extensive Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, territory captured in a 1967 war.   

Reuters