Binyamin Netanyahu took the oath of office as Prime Minister shortly before midnight on Tuesday after the Knesset voted 69-45 in favor of the new government. Five Labor party Knesset members abstained from voting in a protest move against the coalition agreement engineered by party chairman and outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The swearing-in ceremony included a declaration of faith in serving the public and agreeing to abide by Knesset decisions. The same oath was taken by 30 Cabinet ministers, who will become part of the country’s largest ever Cabinet.
Immediate past Finance Minister Roni Bar-On (Kadima) ridiculed the new government in a lengthy speech in which he charged that the bloated Cabinet will cost taxpayers 8 billion shekels ($2 billion) a year.
He also chided the new prime minister for violating the same principles he adopted and fought for during the past several years, particularly his opposition to raising child support payments, which Shas demanded as the price of its joining the Likud-led coalition.
Kadima’s opposition to the Shas demand cost the party a chance to form the government last September. This in turn forced new elections after chairwoman Tzipi Livni failed to convince enough parties to join a government to replace the one led by her predecessor, Ehud Olmert. He continued in office in the wake of Livni's failure.
She took her seat as head of the Opposition on Tuesday night, bitterly attacking Labor party chairman Barak for joining the government despite his having promised after the February election of the new Knesset that he would sit in the Opposition.
Also voting against the government was the Ichud Leumi (National Union) party, which stood by its demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu declare a position against the establishment of a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders.
The Jewish Home party, whose views are similar to Ichud Leumi but who did not demand that prime minister Netanyahu put in writing a specific promise to reject a Palestinian Authority state, joined the coalition.
Netanyahu now heads the 32nd government since the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. He served as Prime Minister from 1996-1999 as well, losing his bid for re-election to Ehud Barak. Barak served as prime minister for only 18 months after a no-confidence vote toppled his government due to extensive concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Yasser Arafat, who at the time was chairman of the PA, immediately launched the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada, after having rejected Barak's offer to hand over to the Arab entity nearly all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.