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Comment and Opinion

Times of Israel: Stepping down, Liberman exposes frailty of coalition-building, by Haviv Rettig Gur

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There is both cynicism and truth in Avigdor Liberman’s case for abandoning Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition-in-the-making just two days before the deadline for forming the new government.

The cynicism is obvious to the point of comical. The new government “won’t be a nationalist one, but the epitome of opportunism,” the outgoing foreign minister railed in a Monday press conference at the Knesset. This from the politician who spent the 2015 election season refusing to pin down whether he would recommend Likud’s Netanyahu for prime minister or the Zionist Union’s Isaac Herzog.

Liberman is rejecting Netanyahu’s rightist government, leaving it with a paper-thin, 61-seat majority, while declaiming risibly that he is doing so in the name of rightist principles. But his concern is real nonetheless. He fears for his party’s very survival.

Read the article in full at Times of Israel.