JERUSALEM – Israel’s right-wing prime minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu was given two more weeks yesterday to form a government, allowing further time to try to balance his coalition by including the centre-left Labour party.
Meanwhile, there were also fresh revelations about the conduct of Israeli troops in the January Gaza operation. The newspaper Haaretzreported the account of one army commander as saying that rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops during the offensive they were fighting a "religious war" against gentiles.
“Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,” he said.
The account by Ram, a pseudonym, was leaked from a February 13th meeting of armed forces members to share their Gaza experiences and published by the left-leaning paper in the second day of revelations that have rocked the Israeli military.
Some veterans, alumni of an Israel Defence Force (IDF) military academy, told of the killing of civilians and their impression that deep contempt for Palestinians pervaded the ranks of the Israeli forces.
Haaretzand the daily Maariv,which also published the accounts, quoted over half a dozen soldiers and airmen. In longer excerpts in yesterday's "Week's End" edition, the daily quoted Ram as saying his impression of the 22-day operation was "the feeling of an almost religious mission".
There was a “huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out”, he said. The corps’ pamphlets told the history of Israel’s fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present, but the rabbinate’s message imparted the sense that “this operation was a religious war”.
The rabbinate of the IDF provides religious services, including overseeing preparation of kosher food, providing prayerbooks and prayer sessions and religious counselling to soldiers.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has put the Palestinian death toll during the war at 1,417 – 926 civilians, 236 fighters and 255 police officers. Israeli officials have disputed those figures. Thirteen Israelis were killed.
Israel’s February 10th election gave rise to a right-wing majority bloc in parliament, prompting president Shimon Peres to task Mr Netanyahu’s Likud with forming a government within 28 days. Yesterday’s extension sets April 3rd as his new deadline. If unmet, Mr Peres could choose to designate someone else.
Though Mr Netanyahu can clinch alliances with right-wing factions giving him control over most Knesset seats, he wants a broader, more stable coalition with consensus over how – or if – to pursue US-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians. Such extensions are commonplace in Israeli governance, where the multitude of political parties makes coalitions inevitable.
Labor leader Ehud Barak, the outgoing defence minister and former military chief, has said he would ask his party’s executive for a mandate to join Mr Netanyahu’s government. Labor was expected to vote on the motion next week.
Mr Barak told Israel Radio on Thursday that Mr Netanyahu’s overtures “deserve to be considered”. He suggested Labor could soften Mr Netanyahu’s hardline team and avoid conflict with the United States over the Palestinian track and how to handle Iran.
Once Israel’s dominant party, Labor came fourth in the February election, winning just 13 seats. Likud won 27 and the centrist Kadima party of outgoing foreign minister Tzipi Livni polled 28 seats. The far-right Yisrael Beiteinu won 15.
Mr Barak will face strong internal opposition. Half of Labor’s lawmakers vowed after talks on Thursday to fight any bid to join ranks with Mr Netanyahu, which the party’s faction leader, Eitan Cabel, insisted in broadcast remarks would “spell death” for Labor’s future. – (Reuters)