Israel is on the brink of its first government in 12 years led by someone other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If finalized over the coming week, the new coalition would be, in multiple ways, a historic one. It would comprise a record number of parties, including, for the first time, an Arab list. A record eight women would serve as ministers. The party sending its leader to be prime minister earned the smallest electoral haul of any before it. But one first may be remembered as more historic than all of these: Israel will have, for the first time, a prime minister who is religiously observant.
Naftali Bennett announced last weekend that he had reached a deal with the party led by Yair Lapid—a centrist, secular former news anchor—in which each would serve as prime minister for two years in turn. If the agreement is consummated—Netanyahu and others are working furiously to sabotage it—the result will be the most unusual government in Israel’s history, uniting Bennett, a man of the deep right-wing, with partners from the center (Lapid), the left (Labor), and even an Arab-Islamist party with ideological roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.
