Ariana News Agency-<\/em> Netanyahu\u2019s coalition now holds a bare majority of 61 of 120 parliamentary seats after his political rival, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, pulled his faction out of the government Wednesday. If other parties leave the coalition — and some are already threatening to do just that — Israel could head into elections this winter even as Netanyahu is facing corruption probes in three different cases.<\/p>\n Israeli officials already had been urging the Trump administration not to release its proposal too close to the elections, afraid that a plan demanding concessions from Israel would hurt Netanyahu\u2019s chances when hard-liners already accuse him of being too soft on Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that rules the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n After moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing the city as Israel\u2019s capital, Trump said in August that the Palestinians will \u201cget something very good\u201d in his plan because it\u2019s now \u201ctheir turn.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of how the U.S. proposal is pitched, there will be \u201csome things in the plan the Israelis won\u2019t like, so the key is how to make sure that they are OK with the general tenor of the plan,\u201d said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Mideast peace negotiator. Ross predicted that if elections in Israel come in the winter, the Trump administration may wait to make sure Netanyahu is re-elected before presenting the U.S. proposal.<\/p>\n Yet even before the latest developments, Trump was showing increasing frustration that the Israeli leader — with whom he\u2019s forged a close personal bond — wasn\u2019t doing more to help the plan overseen by son-in-law Jared Kushner come to fruition, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump complained in recent meetings that Netanyahu hasn\u2019t been \u201cflexible\u201d or \u201cforward-leaning\u201d enough on the plan, one of the people said.<\/p>\n Some analysts, including Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, say there\u2019s now a chance the plan will never see the light of day. Support in the Arab world, as well as Israel, is essential to the plan\u2019s success.<\/p>\n Recent tensions between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which would be expected to play a key role in financially supporting the peace plan, haven\u2019t helped the proposal\u2019s prospects either.<\/p>\n Given the political turmoil in Israel, the government\u2019s flexibility on sensitive topics such as Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees will be very limited, particularly since Netanyahu may have to defend his right flank from a challenge by Liberman or other more conservative leaders like the Jewish Home party\u2019s Naftali Bennett.<\/p>\n Those rivals have accused Netanyahu of being too moderate on the Palestinian issue. Liberman resigned on Wednesday after the security cabinet on Tuesday agreed to a truce halting a two-day flare-up of fighting in Gaza. He called it a \u201ccapitulation to terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect that the prime minister has probably\u201d told the Americans, \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t present the plan before elections because with this government I have little flexibility,\u201d\u2019 Ross said. \u201c\u2018With this government, you\u2019ll turn it into political football. After the election I\u2019ll be able to broaden my government.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s office didn\u2019t respond to several requests for comment. The prime minister met Thursday with mayors of towns near the Gaza border who are angry that he didn\u2019t strike Hamas harder. His finance and interior ministers have urged the prime minister to call early elections.<\/p>\n Publicly, the Trump-Netanyahu relationship has been one of the strongest in recent history. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has handed Netanyahu key victories without demanding anything in return.<\/p>\n The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital and the move of the American embassy broke with decades of U.S. practice. Then, Trump quit the Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration, which Netanyahu opposed from the start, and he\u2019s led an international campaign to pressure Tehran by reimposing sanctions.<\/p>\n At the same time, Trump has expressed eagerness to do what no president before him has managed to pull off — the \u201cultimate deal\u201d of Middle East peace, drafted by his Jewish son-in-law. At a meeting with Netanyahu in September at the United Nations, the U.S. president said he would like to release the plan in \u201ctwo to three to four months, something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s decision on Jerusalem essentially ended Palestinian participation in U.S. talks. Palestinians have long sought to make east Jerusalem their capital. While Trump administration officials maintained that they weren\u2019t precluding any final decision on the city, preemptively recognizing the holy city as Israel\u2019s capital drew international condemnation.<\/p>\n He\u2019s since gone further, slashing aid to Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n After decades of the U.S. publicly saying it wanted to be an honest broker in the Israel-Palestinian crisis, part of the problem for Netanyahu is that Trump\u2019s policies have been perceived to be so pro-Israel that any plan viewed as conciliatory toward the Palestinians could disappoint the prime minister\u2019s political base. Israelis have grown accustomed to Trump backing them at every turn.<\/p>\n To avoid damaging relations with the Trump administration, Netanyahu would need to give a \u201cqualified yes\u201d to any plan that\u2019s announced, saying he\u2019s open to negotiations with some reservations, according to Sachs of Brookings.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has been so much in Netanyahu\u2019s corner that every deviation toward the mean will sound like an ominous move from the Trump administration,\u201d Sachs said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Israel\u2019s political turmoil isn\u2019t just a problem for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: It\u2019s the latest blow to President Donald Trump\u2019s hopes to unveil a grand Middle East peace plan his son-in-law has spent almost two years on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_mat_hreflang_tags":[],"addvideo":"","video_duration":"","farsit":"","target":"0","top_stories":"0","top":"0"},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[85,137,246,135],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-politics","category-world","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-netanyahu","tag-trump"],"acf":{"myctype":"change","target":false,"top_stories":false,"top":false,"farsit":""},"yoast_head":"\nWhite House officials didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/h2>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s Role<\/h2>\n
\u2018Ultimate Deal\u2019<\/h2>\n