LAST Sunday the Israeli prime minister Binjamin Netanyahu announced a general election to take place on September 4. However, on Monday he suddenly reached a coalition agreement with the centrist Kadina party to command a majority in the Knesset until October 2013 when a new parliament must be elected. Kadina's recently installed leader, Shaul Mofaz, a former Army chief of staff and defence minister, will become a deputy prime minister; he is considered to be a moderate who questions the wisdom of an attack on Iran and believes that a Palestinian state should be set up as soon as possible on 60 per cent of the West Bank with later negotiations on the rest based on an acceptance of the 1967 borders, a principle opposed by Netanyahu.
Binjamin Netanyahu's U-turn gives him more than a year of political stability and reduces his dependence on extremist smaller parties which he often blames for his inability to show flexibly on the Palestinian issue; for Kadina the agreement removes the risk of a heavy defeat in a September election.
The coalition has a number of difficult domestic problems to settle but in the Middle East, America and Europe the main interest will be whether this change makes more likely progress on peaceful and equitable Israeli-Palestinian relations and a less aggressive Israeli attitude to Iran and its nuclear programme.
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