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  Netanyahu Gets More Time, Hopes to Forge Broader Coalition
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Last EditedArmyDem  Mar 20, 2009 01:45pm
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MediaNewspaper - Washington Post
News DateFriday, March 20, 2009 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionIsrael's Incoming Government Could Clash With Obama Administration

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 20, 2009; 9:40 AM

JERUSALEM, March 20 -- The foreign minister of Israel's incoming government lives in a West Bank settlement and will begin life as a diplomat battling the perception that he is anti-Arab.

A leading contender to become defense minister once characterized the two-state solution that forms the basis of U.S. and international policy toward Israel and the Palestinians as "a story the Western world tells with Western eyes." And the potential make-or-break votes in the country's new parliamentary coalition belong to legislators from religious parties that would like to expand settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

The coalition that will make up Israel's next government is not yet final. On Friday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received permission to extend negotiations for two more weeks in hopes of reaching agreements with some of the country's more moderate parties and forging a broader-based unity government in the 120-seat parliament. But Netanyahu thus far has not been able to strike deals with those parties, instead pulling from conservative and religious factions to create a narrow majority that seems tailor-made for conflict with the Obama administration, which supports a Palestinian state and is expected to push for progress on drawing its borders. Netanyahu is himself a skeptic when it comes to Palestinian statehood and has referred to U.S.-backed peace talks as a waste of time.
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