Lieberman the Foreign Minister, Livni the Prophet Elijah

The Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu signed a coalition agreement last night that makes Avigdor Lieberman Israel's next foreign minister, and gives his party four additional ministerial posts.

However, if Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party decides to join the coalition soon, they agreed to amend their deal.

Netanyahu and Livni have been secretly negotiating a deal on a unity government in which Netanyahu would serve as Prime Minister for the first three years and Tzipi Livni would take over for the final year.

But this might be little more than a political ruse Yuval Karni reports in Yediot Acharonoth:

Political sources said that the talks between Netanyahu and Livni served both of their purposes. Netanyahu is able by means of those talks to pressure his right wing partners by hinting to them that they are replaceable. Livni gets to feel as if she is being courted and is an equal partner for forming a government.

The temptation for both of them to form a unity government is large, but there remains a long way yet to go. . . . Livni posed three central conditions to which Netanyahu has yet to respond affirmatively: recognition of a Palestinian state, the Annapolis agreement and promoting the peace process; an equal division of the government between the two of them (equal rotation); and the nullification of all the agreements Netanyahu has reached to date with the other factions.

The likelihood of such a deal materializing, Nahum Barnea writes in Yediot,

is like the visit of Elijah the Prophet during the Passover Seder: We all want him to come, we open the door for him, but we also know that the chances of his actually showing up are slim. Everything that is happening now is too little and too late. The existing gaps lie between two people, Binyamin Netanyahu and Tzippi Livni, both of whom want the rewards but don't want to pay the price.

"The clock is ticking," Barnea concluded, ". . . only a miracle--or a catastrophe--will allow them to recant.