On Monday, Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman is scheduled to meet with representatives from some of Israel’s religious parties, in an attempt to come to some sort of understanding over the differences that are standing in the way of a narrow far right coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu received the endorsements of all of the right-wing religious parties as well as the secularist Yisrael Beiteinu, but as the two sides have been publicly clashing since before the election over domestic issues (in particular conversions and civil marriage) a narrow coalition with such internal strife would almost certainly be short-lived.

The importance of keeping some semblance of unity among the narrow majority that the right-wing bloc represents may be somewhat lessened, however, if reports that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is trying to bring the Labor Party into a Netanyahu government turn out to be true. Still, the addition of Labor’s seats would not allow Netanyahu to cut either the entire religious or secular bloc out of the government.

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