Netanyahu’s deal creates foreign policy headache

The Biden Administration is grappling with how to deal with a new Israeli government that will be the most right-wing in that country’s history and may stand in the way of core United States goals for the Middle East.

The new government will be led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who was ousted from the job just a year ago and is on trial for corruption. To regain the position, Netanyahu formed an alliance with two controversial political figures known for their extreme anti-Arab views, probably dooming any peace deal with Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and the US Republican Party have grown closer over the past decade, undermining decades of bipartisan support for Israel.

Former president Donald Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and recognised the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, delighting Netanyahu. Just this week, Netanyahu delivered a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, a partisan group.

Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden have both said that US support for Israel should remain bipartisan. Netanyahu’s new allies may make that difficult, however.

Some US officials have already privately indicated that they will not meet with Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezazel Smotrich, two likely members of Netanyahu’s government.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich advocate recognising illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where most Palestinians live, and eventually annexing most or all of that territory. They oppose a separate Palestinian state.

Netanyahu needs their support to cement a majority in the Israeli Knesset, or parliament. Their support could also help him pass a law that would allow him to dodge his corruption trial.

The two men have also called for a far harsher crackdown on Palestinian militants and their supporters, including strict curfews in Palestinian villages, mass deportations, and targeted killings of terrorism suspects. They have advocated making it easier for Israeli security forces to use live ammunition against Palestinian protesters who throw stones.

Ben-Gvir has also expressed affinity for the late ultranationalist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose ideology has been described by US-based Jewish NGO the Anti-Defamation League as reflecting ‘‘racism, violence and political extremism’’, and whose organisation until recently was listed as a terrorist group by the US Government.

For years, Ben-Gvir had a poster of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli-American terrorist and Kahane disciple who murdered 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994, hanging in his home, according to Israeli media. In 2007, an Israeli court convicted Ben-Gvir of incitement to racist violence and support for a terrorist organisation.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich want to head the ministries of public security and defence, respectively – portfolios that have the closest contact with US officials.

Netanyahu’s Likud party and Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party yesterday announced an agreement for Ben-Gvir to become security minister. Ben-Gvir has reached an agreement with Netanyahu that would allow him to vastly expand police powers and remove officers from oversight by other legal authorities.

Negotiations to form the government are under way and could take days or even weeks. Netanyahu has offered Smotrich the finance ministry instead of defence, according to Israeli media, but Smotrich has so far given no indication that he will budge from his initial demand.

Republicans remain eager to criticise anything short of unquestioning support for Israel from the Biden Administration. After the Israeli Government revealed that the US Justice Department had launched an inquiry into the May killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh near the West Bank city of Jenin, Texas Senator Ted Cruz demanded that US Attorney-General Merrick Garland and ‘‘everyone involved in this debacle’’ be ‘‘fired or impeached’’.

If Israel’s new government decides to try to annex the West Bank, it would jeopardise the Abraham Accords, a deal brokered under the Trump Administration that opened business and some diplomatic ties between Israel and several Persian Gulf states, such as the United Arab Emirates, that had previously refused to recognise Israel’s existence.

Publicly, US officials remain cautious, saying they want to see what kind of government Netanyahu ultimately forms, while reiterating their ‘‘ironclad’’ commitment to Israel while emphasising American ‘‘values’’ that include freedom and prosperity ‘‘in equal measure’’ for Israelis and Palestinians.

Naming a person who has been convicted of terrorismrelated charges to head Israel’s national police force has alarmed numerous Israelis.

‘‘It means that the police will become politicised to favour the extreme right,’’ the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial this week. ‘‘That’s what happens when those accused and convicted of crimes take control of the institutions charged with maintaining law and order.’’

Netanyahu’s right-wing partners will also push for other legislation that would have an impact on not only Palestinians and Arabs. They have threatened to criminalise homosexuality, and to ban non-Orthodox Jews from Israeli citizenship.