Israeli coalition agreements are a bit like pre-nuptial deals for celebrity marriages. The lawyers try to work out in advance who will retain ownership over each and every asset, while the couple are rushing ahead to tie the knot before the tabloids lose interest.

Immediately after a Knesset election, the party leaders expecting to be in the new government arrive for the talks with long shopping lists of policies and laws they want to pass, budget demands and cabinet posts.

For days, the media is inundated with chaff leaked by both sides and then things go quiet as compromises are reached and the actual agreements are drafted and signed.

Ultimately, the desire for power overcomes everything else and the finer details wait until everyone has their feet under a ministerial desk.

The past week in Israeli politics has been no exception (that is, no exception from the way elections used to work before the long stalemate of 2019-2021).

The leaders of the various parties comprising Religious Zionism, United Torah Judaism and Shas (three lists, six parties) all met Benjamin Netanyahu for preliminary talks. All kinds of wild ideas were reported, like removing the ban on “conversion therapy” and banning football matches on Shabbat.

Mr Netanyahu tried to rein in his ambitious partners, suggesting they first agree on which party gets which ministries, swear in the new government by the Knesset’s inauguration on 15 November, and only then start thrashing out policy.

Initially there were cries of indignation. They’ve been here with Bibi before. This time they promised they’d tie him down to specific details first. But as the week drew to a close and the promise of high office beckoned, they began to relent.

As things stand now, the parties are agreed on working out a division of the cabinet spoils and signing a set of general policies and leaving the messy bits for later.

This will enable Mr Netanyahu to become prime minister again as early as Wednesday, after 17 long (for him) months of exile. But it almost guarantees problems down the road.

All three of Likud’s partners insist that the new government pass an “overriding clause” which will allow the Knesset to countermand the Supreme Court. The coalition agreement, as reported on Wednesday night, will include a commitment to passing this but won’t specify anything beyond that.

What kind of a majority will the Knesset need to override a Supreme Court ruling? A simple plurality? An absolute majority of 61 MKs or a higher special majority?

And will the override just be for the rare instances in which the Supreme Court rules that legislation passed by the Knesset is unconstitutional? Or will it be for every ruling on actions by government departments?

The answers to these questions will have huge implications for the future of Israeli democracy. Mr Netanyahu’s partners have those answers. They know what they are trying to achieve.

But the soon-to-be prime minister is less scrutable. By all accounts, he is not that eager to radically change the balance between the powers and would prefer to have the threat hovering indefinitely over the judiciary, at least as long as his own case is still being heard in the Jerusalem District Court and, at some point in the future, perhaps also in the Supreme Court. He wants to kick this can of worms down the road but his partners will demand it is opened before long.

Far-right pressure
The question of whether the inclusion in the government of far-right politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich is a matter for diaspora Jews to opine on has been debated so far without asking whether their actual policies will have any direct impact on the diaspora.

But among the demands raised by Mr Netanyahu’s prospective partners is at least one issue that should be of interest to Jews anywhere.

It has escaped wider notice that Mr Smotrich has raised an old demand of his in the talks with the incoming prime minister — to remove the “grandchild clause” from the Law of Return.

Under the Law of Return, any Jew, or child or grandchild of a Jew, is eligible automatically for Israeli citizenship.

The “grandchild clause” has long been controversial, especially considering that most immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union in recent years are not considered Jewish according to Orthodox halacha. But there has been no serious move to change the Law of Return. It is Israel’s most sacred credo as a Jewish State and politicians have always been wary of tampering with it.

How serious is Mr Smotrich’s demand? It’s impossible to say at this point, but he has the support of the ultra-Orthodox parties on this. Like him, they want to keep out those they consider goyim and are aware that an influx of olim fleeing both Putin’s Russia and war-torn Ukraine is already on the way.

Over 72 years after it was first passed, there are valid arguments for reviewing the Law of Return and making it more relevant for the 21st century.

Itamar Ben-Gvir GettyImages-1244099796

Itamar Ben-Gvir (Getty Images)

But this is the law which establishes the most fundamental bond between Israel and Jews around the world who may one day seek shelter there. Can major changes be made to it just like that, without any consultation with representatives from the diaspora?

Opposition in disarray
As this is being written, not every party has informed President Herzog who they are endorsing as prime minister but, unless there are surprises, the score-line will be 64-28 to Benjamin Netanyahu. In addition to his own party Yesh Atid, only Labour are expected to endorse outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid. Benny Gantz’s National Unity and the three Arab parties are abstaining.

It’s only a formality and Mr Netanyahu would have won a majority anyway, but the refusal of most of the opposition parties to endorse Mr Lapid is another symptom of the chronic divisions that brought down the Lapid-Bennett government.

“They went divided into government and that’s why they didn’t last. Now they’re going even more divided back to opposition,” crowed a senior aide to Mr Netanyahu this week. “We remained united in opposition and that’s we’re now back in power.”

Smotrich F221106YS20

Bezalel Smotrich

He has a point. As Mr Netanyahu put it in his recently published autobiography, his spell out of office was just “a hiatus.”

Whatever their disagreements on policy, the new coalition looks a lot steadier than the old one. And they won’t have to face anything like the determined and concerted opposition campaign that Mr Netanyahu and his allies mounted from day one of the old coalition.

By dint of Yesh Atid being the second-largest party in the Knesset, Mr Lapid will now serve as the official Leader of the Opposition, but none of the other opposition parties are about to recognise his leadership. His photograph will soon go up on the wall in the prime minister’s office, next to that of Israel’s former leaders.

But will he always retain the less-than-pleasant title of Israel’s shortest-serving PM (even shorter than Naftali Bennett’s time in office)?

Mr Lapid did something in this election that no other former Israeli prime minister has accomplished. He managed to lose an election despite winning more seats than in the previous election.

In fact, Yesh Atid won over a third more votes in last week’s election than it did back in March last year.

As Mr Netanyahu learned long ago, though, to guarantee a win you need to make sure your entire bloc has a majority. But Mr Lapid’s achievement is far from meaningless and, once the dust settles, he will remain the prime minister’s most serious rival.

As one of his aides summed it up: “Loads of mistakes were made in this election campaign and we’ll have to learn from them, but the fact remains that over the past 15 years and eight elections, only one man has managed to beat Netanyahu — and Lapid can do it again.”