no, there is no crisis just yet

There is a lot of noise in the coalition negotiations, and it seems some think the tactic of creating the appearance of a crisis will help them in their negotiations. Today the Likud has even been talking about not capitulating to Smotritch's demands even at the price of going to new elections.

Let's not forget, Netanyahu was given the mandate to form a coalition just 9 days ago. He has a month to form a coalition, and then gets a nearly automatic extension of two weeks should it be necessary. Not even 9 days have passed. They have plenty of time to do this dance ad still come to an agreement.

As I said before the election, it seems to me that the Ben Gvir and Smotritch side of this coalition is what is likely to eventually bring it down, either with a provocative visit to Har Habayit that upsets UTJ and the rest of the world or their demands for full right policies in Judea and Samaria that Netanyahu wont follow through on or some defense policy that they want to be more extreme on but Netanyahu wants to be less extreme on or something like that. But that is eventually, not now. I do believe that at some point they will finish negotiations with agreements of some sort and form a government. Just right now it works for both sides to make it look like a crisis. 

That being said, while it isnt really a crisis - neither side can make a go of it without the other - they both need each other, so they will eventually work it out - it isnt a crisis but it isnt good. Ben Gvir and Smotritch are discovering what they already knew - that Netanyahu cannot be trusted. The claim repeated over and over about forming a full right government was just to trick the voters into voting for him but he prefers not to, as he refuses to commit to "full right" policies they are requesting. Additionally, they are seeing Netanyahu back out of promises made in earlier negotiation days (specifically to Ben Gvir). They knew it already, but now they are living it and have to figure out how to deal with it without letting Netanyahu dump all the blame on them.

We shall see who blinks first.

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