The right-wing Likud-led coalition government of Bibi "Bomb Bomb" Netanyahu has moved even further right with the deal struck with extremist Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beteinu Party to form a new governing coalition. Lieberman is a polarizing hardliner who questions Israeli Arabs' rights and aggressively promotes new settlements on the West Bank. In an ominous but not totally unexpected development, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon resigned his position, saying that,
"...To my great dismay extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel, also over the Likud party, and are shaking the house and threatening to hurt its inhabitants. I fought with all my might against manifestations of extremism, violence and racism in Israeli society that threatens its sturdiness and is seeping into the army and already damaging it."Yaalon was a relative moderate in an increasingly radical government that has made common cause with dead-enders who refuse to relinquish an inch of land taken after the 1967 war with the Arabs, or enter into talks with the Palestinian Authority. Now, Lieberman, himself a settler on the West Bank, appears to be in line to succeed Yaalon, despite the fact that he has no military experience, unlike Yaalon who was a former Chief of Staff of the Army. This will likely mean the end of any prospects for peace talks with the Palestinians and harsher military methods against them as Bibi Bomb Bomb links up with the most extreme right in Israel.
