Will Netanyahu Clip the Wings of His New Cabinet Hawks?

One is a pistol-packing ex-member of an outlawed Jewish militant group. The other is a religious fundamentalist. Both are West Bank settlers averse to Palestinians' self-rule - let alone their hopes of statehood.

And as senior coalition partners to reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will be within reach of the levers of power - a troubling prospect for Israel's once-dominant secular-left and friends in the West.

Netanyahu turned to the ultra-nationalists after centrist parties boycotted him over his long-running corruption trial. He needs their support to stay in office as he argues his innocence in court. But he denies this spells pliability to their demands.

"I will navigate this government. The other parties are joining me. I'm not joining them," Netanyahu told Al Arabiya on Dec. 15, pledging to enforce "liberal rightist" policymaking.

Besides, he said, "a lot of them have changed and moderated their views, principally because with the assumption of power comes responsibility".

There may be precedent in Avigdor Lieberman, a firebrand whose 2006 appointment as deputy prime minister triggered much the same response as Ben-Gvir's rise: liberal warnings of civil war and, on Israel's top TV satire, his lampooning as a Nazi.

Lieberman proved to be politically adaptable. He served in various coalitions - one of which included an Islamist party - and ended up in the current opposition, from which he has scorned Netanyahu's new allies as "zealots and extremists".

Still, Lieberman could also play spoiler from the right. As Netanyahu's foreign minister in a previous government, he would publicly promote a harder line on the Palestinians than the premier's. In a later term, Lieberman resigned as Netanyahu's defense minister in protest at a Gaza truce he deemed too lax.

Netanyahu's conservative Likud party has now retained the defense and foreign ministries. But the optics around Ben-Gvir and Smotrich may yet prove combustible for him - for example, if either man visits or prays at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, an icon of Palestinian nationalism which is also the holiest site for Judaism as vestige of its two ancient temples.

Netanyahu's previous 15 years as premier saw him feathering the nests of the hawks in his cabinet - or clipping their wings - as he deemed necessary. Back then, however, he had parties to his left to help him function as an ideological fulcrum.

"With all the parties in the incoming government situated to Netanyahu's right, it will be difficult for him to replicate that role this time," argued Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank. "Does he want to?"

Pacing themselves

On Ben-Gvir's and Smotrich's calls for West Bank annexations, Netanyahu is on record as being in favor while also avoiding action on the ground that would risk escalating into confrontations with Washington or Arab partners.

Yet Smotrich did carve out a cabinet niche for himself overseeing settlements, which most world powers deem illegal for taking occupied land that Palestinians want for a state.

"He can be effective in multiplying and consolidating Israel's presence in the West Bank," said Amotz Asa-El, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, noting Smotrich's high pace of infrastructure-building as a former transport minister.

For Ben-Gvir, by contrast, this is the first stint in government. As police minister, he will focus on law-and-order issues important to a swathe of Israelis, Asa-El predicted - including crime-hit Arabs against whom Ben-Gvir once agitated.

"After legitimating his position in broader Israeli circles, he will proceed to the realms that not all agree on - namely the West Bank," Asa-El said. But that may have to wait, as Ben-Gvir's portfolio does not grant major powers in the West Bank, which is under the overall control of the military.

Arguably, Ben-Gvir, 46, and Smotrich, 42, can afford to shelve some of their agendas for this round with Netanyahu, 73.

"But that's counting on restraint from people who come from very different ideological world-views than what we've seen in Israeli governments before," said Daniel Shapiro, a former US envoy to Israel and now Atlantic Council distinguished fellow.

Ben-Gvir came up through the Kahane Chai group, which is blacklisted in Israel and the United States for its virulently anti-Arab doctrines. Smotrich's advocacy of Jewish claims on the West Bank is informed by a doctrinaire faith in Bible prophesy.

Earlier generations of Israeli far-rightists in government "demonstrated an interest and capacity to engage in a genuine two-way dialogue with the United States and other international players, and seemed to recognize the limits on pursuing some of their most ideological positions," Shapiro said.

"It remains to be seen whether that approach will characterize members of the incoming coalition."

Alan Dershowitz, a prominent American-Jewish jurist who has advised US and Israeli leaders, said Ben-Gvir and Smotrich disavowed racism and homophobia in meetings with him this month.

"The word 'balance' came up a number of times" in their reassurances during the conversations, Dershowitz told Reuters.

"Obviously they were in some ways trying to get me to have a positive impression of them," he said. "Let's see what happens when I'm not in the room and the people in the room are pushing them to become more extreme. That's the litmus test."

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Afaf Mohammed did what she could not for more than a decade: she climbed Mount Qasyun to admire a sleeping Damascus "from the sky" and watch the sun rise.

Through the long years of Syria's civil war, which began in 2011 with a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, people were not allowed access to the mountain.

But now they can return to look down again on their capital, with its high-rise hotels and poor suburbs exhausted by war.

When night falls, long queues of vehicles slowly make their way up a twisting road to a brightly lit corniche at the summit.

Once there, they can relax, listen to music, eat and, inevitably, take selfies.

On some evenings there have even been firework displays.

Afaf Mohammed told AFP that "during the war we weren't allowed up to Mount Qasyun. There were few public places that were truly accessible."

At her feet, the panorama of Syria's capital stretched far and wide. It was the second time in weeks that the dentist in her thirties had come to the mountaintop.

A man sells tea on Mount Qasyun, from which government artillery used to pound opposition-held areas under Assad's rule. (AFP)

- Ideal for snipers -

Her first was just after a coalition of opposition fighters entered the city, ousting Assad on December 8.

On that occasion she came at dawn.

"I can't describe how I felt after we had gone through 13 years of hardship," she said, wrapped close in an abaya to ward off the chilly breeze.

Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes elegant presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

Mohammed believes the revolution brought "a phenomenal freedom" that includes the right to visit previously forbidden places.

"No one can stop us now or block our way. No one will harm us," she said.

Patrols from the security forces of Syria's new rulers are in evidence, however.

They look on as a boy plays a tabla drum and young people on folding chairs puff from water pipes as others dance and sing, clapping their hands.

Everything is good-natured, reflecting the atmosphere of freedom that now bathes Syria since the end of Assad rule.

Gone are the stifling restrictions that once ruled the people's lives, and soldiers no longer throng the city streets.

Visitors to Mount Qasyun can now relax, listen to music, eat and snap selfies. (AFP)

- Hot drinks and snacks -

Mohammad Yehia, in his forties, said he once brought his son Rabih up to Mount Qasyun when he was small.

"But he doesn't remember having been here," he said.

After Assad fell, his son "asked if we would be allowed to go up there, and I said, 'Of course'," Yehia added.

So they came the next day.

Yehia knows the place well -- he used to work here, serving hot drinks and snacks from the back of a van to onlookers who came to admire the view.

He prides himself on being one of the first to come back again, more than a decade later.

The closure of Mount Qasyun to the people of Damascus robbed him of his livelihood at a time when the country was in economic freefall under Western sanctions. The war placed a yoke of poverty on 90 percent of the population.

"We were at the suffocation point," Yehia told AFP.

"Even if you worked all day, you still couldn't make ends meet.

"This is the only place where the people of Damascus can come and breathe a little. It's a spectacular view... it can make us forget the worries of the past."

Malak Mohammed, who came up the mountain with her sister Afaf, said that on returning "for the first time since childhood" she felt "immense joy".

"It's as if we were getting our whole country back," Malak said. Before, "we were deprived of everything".

Will Netanyahu Clip the Wings of His New Cabinet Hawks?