At a party meeting in June, he ridiculed the Prime Minister, saying, “Netanyahu doesn’t belong, not to the right and not to the left”.
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Lieberman’s invitation last week to join the government surprised political analysts as it came in the midst of protracted negotiations with Israel’s opposition leader, Isaac Herzog.
The newly constituted Netanyahu government is not the Israeli government that the United States or Europe wants. Indeed, many Labor legislators have been attacking Herzog lately, accusing him of “crawling” into the government without even waiting to see what policy modifications he could extract from Netanyahu.
His agreement to join the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rattling many in the Middle East but is being hailed in Israeli officialdom as an important step toward a broader and more stable governing coalition.
Netanyahu undermined and embarrassed his current defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, and Yaalon made a decision to jump before he was pushed, tendering his resignation. They said they were not threatening to leave Netanyahu’s coalition, which would still have 61 MKs without Yisrael Beytenu.
Talks with Yisrael Beytenu began after negotiations with the Zionist Union failed to progress.
Israeli media characterizes Mr. Netanyahu’s government as the most right-wing in Israel’s history since it was re- elected last March.
On May 20, Moshe Ya’alon announced his resignation from the government and the Knesset. Such statements have prompted critics to describe him as a “loose cannon”, a label which makes many people in Israel and overseas nervous when it comes to the sensitive post of defense minister.
A spokesman for Lieberman, a longtime politician who has previously served as foreign minister and lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, said the deal would be signed in parliament at 0800 GMT. In his resignation announcement, Ya’alon warned that “extremist elements have taken control of the country”.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote – in a New York Times op-ed piece released on Wednesday – that Israel is destroying itself because of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “steady elimination” of Israel separating itself from Palestinians in the West Bank, calling it a “dark hour” for Israel’s future.
The deal would shore up Mr Netanyahu’s one-seat majority in parliament.
The coalition with “Israel Our home” party’s six mandates will consist of 67 out of 120 MPs and include all right-wing and religious parties represented in the Knesset. The party’s Sofa Landwer will become migration minister. Following this, he and his family emigrated to Israel in 1978 where he was conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces and later studied International Relations and Political Science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
This is by no means the first time Mr Liberman has been in the public eye.
Yaalon did not go quietly, warning of a rising tide of extremism. Known for his inflammatory statements, he is one of the country’s most controversial and polarising politicians.
He has in the past called for the beheading of Palestinian “terrorists” and is now trying to introduce legislation that could see Palestinian attackers sentenced to the death penalty.
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“I welcome [Mr. Lieberman] and his party members”, the Israeli leader said at a joint news conference. Gen. Yair Golan, recently criticized what he said was widespread discrimination in Israeli society.
