Temple Mount clashes threaten Israeli coalition
After losing his Knesset majority April 6 when legislator Idit Silman ditched the coalition, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is now confronted with the Ra’am party freezing its coalition membership over Temple Mount incidents.
Violent clashes on the Temple Mount and the stoning of buses packed with Jewish worshippers on their way to the Western Wall on April 17 threaten to bring down an already rickety coalition government.
This isn’t the first time that violence has occurred in Jerusalem when Ramadan coincides with the Passover holiday. It is, however, the first time that a religious Muslim party, Ra’am, is part of the coalition. And it is not just a part of the coalition either. The government relies on it. Should it withdraw, the whole government would collapse immediately.
What this means is that any move taken by the government or security forces perceived as harmful to Muslim worshippers could ignite an already volatile situation. In the age of social media, when every video of an Israeli police officer confronting a Muslim worshipper goes viral and adds fuel to the fire, Ra’am party chairman Mansour Abbas is trapped.
The man who led his party in a bold, historic direction (into the coalition) is now caught between his desire to continue with the coalition partnership and increasingly loud voices in his party’s Shura Council (the religious authority for Ra’am) and the Muslim community at large to quit the coalition immediately. This is exacerbated by challenges from his arch political rivals in the Arab Joint List in the opposition. They depict him as having lost his way and succumbing to the “dictates of the Zionists.” From moment to moment, Abbas seems to be upping the ante on his personal gamble.
