What Benjamin Netanyahu Stands to Gain, and Lose, From Cabinet Shake-Up

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April. Photo: Reuters

Aaron David Miller is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and most recently the author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.” He is on Twitter: @AaronDMiller2.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised his country–and the world–this week by apparently offering his longtime rival Avigdor Lieberman the post of defense minister.

Replacing Moshe Ya’alon, who announced his resignation Friday as Mr. Netanyahu publicly negotiated his replacement, would do a lot for Mr. Netanyahu: He stands to broaden his thin governing majority and to reinforce himself against right-wing pressure at home as well as U.S. efforts to press him on the peace process and settlements. He could better secure his position until 2018, when he would surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-governing prime minister. The exit of Mr. Ya’alon, a longtime Israeli military figure, also sends a powerful signal that the Israel Defense Forces should be careful about challenging his government. Senior military officials, and Mr. Ya’alon, have been critical on several points, including the government’s defense of an Israeli soldier who shot a wounded Palestinian lying on the ground in March after the Palestinian stabbed another Israeli soldier.

In the short term, Mr. Netanyahu’s actions may bring peace to his governing coalition. But the price will be continued and possibly greater tensions with the Palestinians, the U.S. and others. Notably, though, Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t much care. This move illustrates his decision to look beyond the Obama administration toward what he hopes will be a friendlier face in Washington.

Mr. Lieberman’s party joining the Netanyahu government would add precious seats to Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. But Mr. Lieberman is a problematic partner. He represents a secular party that has had its share of tensions with Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-orthodox coalition partners over national service. Mr. Lieberman resigned last year as foreign minister to protest what he considered Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to wipe out Hamas in Gaza and to build more settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He also wanted more support for legislation to remove Arabic as an official language, strengthen the influence of Jewish law, reduce the Israeli Supreme Court’s powers, and, according to the New York Times, “entrench the automatic citizenship of Jews worldwide and Jewish symbols of the state.” Mr. Lieberman, who is known for provocative statements and lives in an Israeli settlement south of Bethlehem, has threatened to bomb the Aswan dam in the event of war with Egypt and has proposed transferring some Arab-Israeli towns to the Palestinian Authority to help preserve the Jewish Israeli majority in the north.

He could, of course, moderate in his new position. More likely is that his views on Palestinians, security, and defense issues will aggravate Israel’s already-tense relations with the U.S. and others. Mr. Lieberman is expected to backstop Mr. Netanyahu’s opposition to the French initiative for peace with the Palestinians. And should the Obama administration contemplate its own peace initiative this year, it would find Mr. Lieberman equally or more opposed than Mr. Netanyahu.

Another issue for Washington is what effect Mr. Lieberman would have on negotiations over U.S. security assistance to Israel. Talks will be controlled by the prime minister, not the defense minister, but negotiations to extend that agreement have been going on for months and were not helped by a public spat between Mr. Netanyahu and the White House this spring. Washington and Jerusalem appear to disagree over not just money but also regional priorities, differences compounded by residual bad feelings from the Iran nuclear deal. The outgoing defense minister, Mr. Ya-alon, is tough-minded and pragmatic; he has worked hard to establish relations with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. Mr. Netanyahu has intimated that he would prefer to wait for the next U.S. administration rather than settle for an unsatisfying deal. It’s hard to imagine this memorandum not getting done before year’s end. Still, changing defense ministers midstream poses a potentially significant obstacle.

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Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon announces his resignation on May 20 in Tel Aviv. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mr. Lieberman’s elevation does not suggest good news for relations with the Palestinians. Mr. Ya’alon and the Israeli Coordinator for the West Bank have managed to preserve security cooperation and keep a volatile situation from worsening. Mr. Lieberman’s forceful rhetoric could be a warning. He has described the Palestinian Authority as a political carcass and threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders if they don’t return the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war. He referred in March to “disloyal Israeli Arabs, saying: “Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done–we need to pick up an ax and cut off his head” and that “Otherwise we won’t survive here.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s government shake-up is a reminder that all politics are local. The prime minister appears to be assembling a government–one that some have called the most right-wing in Israel’s history–geared toward ensuring his political survival amid U.S. and other international pressure on Israel. Unless Mr. Lieberman has undergone a transformation, his presence in Mr. Netanyahu’s government will almost certainly attract attention and pressure, not deflect it.