Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government faced its first crisis on Monday when his most powerful political ally threatened to deny him support over a budget dispute, Reuters reported.
Netanyahu weathered the storm for now by calling a meeting with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu faction protested a decision to provide funds to schools sponsored by a smaller Orthodox Jewish faction.
But the crisis pointed up the fragility of Netanyahu's eight-month-old coalition, already under Western pressure to stop Jewish settlement building so as to end a prolonged stalemate in peace efforts with Palestinians.
In addition to the diplomatic standoff, tensions between the religious and secular Jewish parties that comprise Netanyahu's fractious coalition may eventually force him to look for additional partners or seek an early national election.
"This is the last straw," Lieberman told reporters whom he hastily gathered in parliament to press demands on Netanyahu to match funds he had promised a smaller religious party by rescinding earlier budget cuts for immigrant absorption.
"If they found money for the Orthodox, they ought to find some for the immigrants," said the Moldovan-born Lieberman, who draws much of his support from Israel's large immigrant population from Russia and nearby republics.
Lieberman threatened not to help Netanyahu in several votes of no-confidence tabled by opposition parties, then recanted after Netanyahu's office issued a statement pledging to negotiate a solution by next week.
Lieberman, a settler accused of anti-Arab sentiments for urging that citizens be made to swear loyalty to Israel, insisted he had not tried to topple Netanyahu's coalition, one of the strongest rightist governments Israel has ever had.
"Sometimes you just have to thump strongly on the table to get what you want," an aide to Lieberman said.
The dispute with Lieberman's 15-member faction, the largest in Israel's 74-member coalition after Netanyahu's own Likud party numbering 27, had a quick ripple effect in parliament.
Netanyahu had to delay a vote on another government-backed measure -- a bill proposing creation of a biometric citizens' directory critics denounced as an invasion of privacy -- once it became clear the measure may not end up being approved.
...