LIKUD:
Prime Minister: Benjamin Netanyahu
Vice Premier and Regional Cooperation Minister: Silvan Shalom
Vice Premier and Minister of Strategic Affairs: Moshe Ya'alon
Finance: Yuval Steinitz
Education: Gideon Sa'ar
Justice: Yaakov Neeman (Likud-appointed)
Transportation: Yisrael Katz
Diaspora Affairs and National Public Relations: Yuli Edelstein
Communications: Moshe Kahlon
Environmental Protection and Ministerial Liaison to Knesset: Gilad Erdan
Science, Culture and Sport: Limor Livnat
Minister without portfolio (for citizens' services, computerization and Internet): Michael Eitan
Strategic Affairs: Moshe Ya'alon
Minister without portfolio (for intelligence agencies): Dan Meridor
Minister without portfolio: Benny Begin
Minister without portfolio: Yossi Peled
Yisrael Beiteinu:
Foreign Affairs: Avigdor Lieberman
Public Security: Yitzhak Aharonovitch
National Infrastructures: Uzi Landau
Tourism: Stas Meseznikov
Immigrant Absorption: Sofa Landver
Labor:
Defense: Ehud Barak
Industry, Trade and Labor: Benjamin Ben-Eliezer
Welfare and Social Services: Isaac Herzog
Agriculture: Shalom Simhon
Minister without portfolio (for minorities): Avishay Braverman
Shas:
Interior: Eli Yishai
Construction and Housing: Ariel Atias
Religious Affairs: Ya'acov Margi
Minister without portfolio in Prime Minister's Office: Meshulam Nahari
Habayit Hayehudi:
Science and Technology: Daniel Herschkowitz
Health: no appointment, Netanyahu will oversee a deputy minister
(Ehud Barak, Avigdor Lieberman, Eli Yishai, Dan Meridor are deputy prime ministers.)
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The new prime minister became the country's youngest leader in 1996 before being driven out of office three years later by Ehud Barak, who will now answer to him as defense minister. Netanyahu's swearing-in Tuesday crowns a decade-long comeback.
Long a hawkish opponent of territorial withdrawal, which he says only emboldens Israel's enemies, Netanyahu has been taking a notably conciliatory line since the February election. He now says he will continue peace talks, though he has still not uttered the words "Palestinian state."
Netanyahu, 59, comes from a prominent Israeli family — he's the son of a well-known historian and the brother of a war hero who died in Israel's daring 1976 hostage rescue in Entebbe, Uganda.
He spent years in the U.S., holds two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and speaks fluent, American-accented English, a background that could play an important role as he works to maintain Israel's vital strategic relationship with Washington.
EHUD BARAK: Defense minister in the outgoing government, the Labor Party chief will retain his job in the new administration after leading the venerable but ailing centrist movement into a coalition with Netanyahu.
The son of Eastern European immigrants, he was born on a communal farm in 1942 and spent 36 years in the army, becoming Israel's most-decorated soldier and the military chief of staff. He joined the government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and in May 1999, he ousted Netanyahu as prime minister.
Barak boosted his image with the recent Gaza campaign, but saw his party's support slip to a historic low — just 13 seats in Parliament.
AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN: An immigrant from Moldova who was once a marginal political player, he will serve as foreign minister and Israel's face abroad — an almost unthinkable proposition just a few months ago for a polarizing politician widely criticized as a racist.
Lieberman's election platform has drawn allegations of racism for a proposal that could end up stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship unless they declare their loyalty to the Jewish state.
But Lieberman's policies are not those of traditionally hard-line parties like Netanyahu's Likud, and he says he supports the creation of a Palestinian state.
Instead, his focus has on Israel, particularly on the perceived disloyalty of the country's Arab minority, which he sees as a fifth column. He supports redrawing Israel's borders and pushing areas with heavy concentrations of Arabs out of the country and into Palestinian jurisdiction.
MOSHE YAALON: A political newcomer, Yaalon will serve as deputy prime minister and a minister in charge of strategic affairs. That will give him a voice in important decisions about Israeli actions toward its archenemy, Iran, which Israel says is building a nuclear weapon that could pose an existential threat.
Yaalon served as the military chief of staff between 2002 and 2005, leading operations in the West Bank that helped crush armed Palestinian opposition to Israel there.
He was critical of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and has taken a hard line on security issues. Widely seen as a straight shooter not tainted by politics, he spent time at a think tank in Jerusalem before joining the Likud ahead of the elections.
Netanyahu's policy plans
Reuters
Benjamin Netanyahu had previously the job from 1996 to 1999 and took a tough line on the Palestinians and the economy.
This year he led the right-wing Likud party back to power by promising a new approach to peace efforts and ways to stimulate the economy. Here are some of Netanyahu's ideas, and clues to their implementation:
* The U.S.-backed peace process has gone around in circles. Israel should instead focus on creating a generation of Palestinians with a real stake in peace, by actively building up the Palestinian economy.
* Creating a genuine "peace partnership" based on mutual economic interest, and avoiding the deadlock over territorial disputes, will enhance Israel's security.
* Creating a Palestinian state is not a priority now, and maybe never. Netanyahu refuses to reaffirm publicly an Israeli commitment to the basic, Western-backed acceptance that there can be no alternative to a "two-state solution."
* He will not try to back out on past treaties. The coalition deal states that "Israel is committed to all the diplomatic and international agreements that Israeli governments have signed throughout the years."
* He has a "strategic goal" of toppling Islamist Hamas from its power base in the Gaza Strip, since Iranian-armed Hamas says it will never recognize Israel in any case.
* Netanyahu -- who quit the Ariel Sharon government in 2005 in protest at its decision to withdraw from Gaza -- says the outgoing government's January offensive to tame Hamas militants stopped too soon and failed to improve Israel's security.
* He regards Iran's suspected drive to build an atomic bomb as a clear and present danger to Israel's survival which cannot be left to fester if Western diplomatic efforts fail. Like his centrist opponents he refuses to rule out an Israeli strike.
* With its ties to Iran, Syria seems an unlikely peace partner for Netanyahu any time soon in his premiership -- unless opening a channel to Damascus promises to pay off diplomatically.
* He will not begin his premiership by ordering any stop to the expansion of certain Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land, despite the likelihood of United States and European Union criticism of these towns as obstacles to peace.
* His coalition promises to "enforce the law" on unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank which the previous government promised to evacuate but mostly left untouched.
* His chosen foreign minister, coalition partner Avigdor Lierberman, looks on Israeli Arabs as a fifth column who should be invited to leave Israel and live with the Palestinians if they cannot commit to full loyalty to the Jewish state.
* He avoided forming a government relying too heavily on Lieberman and, after winning more time, secured the alliance of Ehud Barak's Labor party for a balanced "unity" government as he calls it -- a sign he will not be hostage to the far-right.
* Netanyahu impressed investors with free-market policies that took Israel out of recession a few years ago, and he aims to re-inject confidence into the market place by keeping a tight hand on the finance ministry.
* Netanyahu says he will cut taxes to stimulate the flagging economy, which could make the tight control of state spending his toughest task, having to say 'No' to coalition partners. There is already speculation about big defense and education budget cuts.
Quotes from the investment speech
-- "The government will work to bolster national security and achieve personal security for Israel's citizens through a determined struggle against violence and terror."
-- "The government will move the diplomatic process forward and work for the advancement of peace with all our neighbors, while protecting the historic and national security interests of Israel."
-- "The government will promote a plan to deal with the economic crisis and work toward the creation of the economic conditions that will enable sustainable growth, while creating and protecting jobs."
-- "The government will maintain the Jewish character of the state and Jewish tradition, and also respect the religions and traditions of the country's ethnic communities."
The past present of a Minister of Foreign Affairs
Reuters
Israel's incoming foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has stirred controversy over the years with comments about Arabs, notably Arab Israeli citizens and also Egypt. He once suggested Egypt's Aswan Dam might be bombed and last year he said the president of Israel's Arab peace partner could "go to hell."
Following is a selection of quotes from Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beitenu party:
2009 - "No loyalty, no citizenship" -- Lieberman's election slogan calling for legislation to require Israelis, including Arab citizens, to swear loyalty to the Jewish state.
"What we state unequivocally is that we are completely opposed to what has been and still is the guiding principle of Israel's foreign policy: 'land for peace' ... There is either 'peace for peace' or the exchange of territory and populations."
(Referring to his proposal to trade Arab-populated parts of Israel to a Palestinian state in exchange for Israel annexing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank)
"You have to be generous to your friends and cruel to your enemies. We are simply a society of wimps."
2008 - "Time and time again our leaders go to Egypt to meet (President Hosni) Mubarak and he has never agreed to make an official visit here as president. If he wants to talk to us, he should come here. If he doesn't want to come here, he can go to hell."
2007 - (To an Israeli Arab fellow member of Parliament:) "You are an ally in the Knesset of terrorists. I hope that Hamas will take care of you and all the rest once and for all. Don't worry, your day will come."
"If Israel has to deal with the Iranian threat by itself, it can do so."
2006 - Speaking of Israeli Arab legislators who support the Palestinian cause: "The fate of the collaborators in the Knesset will be identical to that of those who collaborated with the Nazis. Collaborators, as well as criminals, were executed after the Nuremberg trials at the end of the World War Two. I hope that will be the fate of collaborators in this house."
2001 - "Mubarak continues to act against us and to travel for consultations with Saddam Hussein. If he carries out his threat and puts forces into the Sinai, it would be an example of a (crossing) of the red line to which we would have to respond strongly, including by bombing the Aswan Dam."
Facts and figures
The composition of the ruling coalition
Benjamin Netanyahu presented the new Israeli government later on Tuesday made up of right- and left-leaning parties with differing views on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Following are the political parties that form the coalition government, the number of seats they hold in the 120-member parliament and positions their leaders hold on main issues.
LIKUD - 27. Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing party, wants to shift the focus of stalled peace negotiations with the Palestinians away from territorial issues, which he says have blocked progress towards a deal, to shoring up the economy in the West Bank. He has shied away from declaring support for a Palestinian state. Any Palestinian entity, Netanyahu says, must have limited powers of sovereignty and no military. He has pledged to seek a broad regional peace agreement. Curbing Iran's nuclear programme, which Israel calls a threat to the existence of the Jewish state, will be high on the agenda, Netanyahu says.
YISRAEL BEITENU - 15. Avigdor Lieberman's Russian-accented Hebrew has been music to the ears of many of the million Israelis who came from the former Soviet Union since the 1980s. The incoming foreign minister's policies towards Arabs, which some critics call racist, have won him a wider electorate. Lieberman does not oppose in principle the establishment of a Palestinian state. But he says land where many of Israel's 1.5 million Arabs live should be "swapped" for West Bank Jewish settlements in a peace deal with the Palestinians. He also wants Israelis, including Arab citizens, to swear allegiance to the Jewish state.
LABOUR - 13. Having ruled for the first half of Israel's 60 years, Labour spearheaded interim peace accords with the Palestinians in the 1990s. The centre-left party is now led by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who served as prime minister from 1999 to 2001. Labour backs the creation of a Palestinian state. However, the party signed a coalition deal that did not mention statehood. Instead, the political pact contained a promise the new government would respect Israel's existing international agreements -- accords that envisage a Palestinian state. Barak is to stay on as defence minister under Netanyahu. Some of Labour's legislators opposed to the coalition deal may opt not to support the government.
SHAS - 11. A fixture in successive governments, the Union of Sephardic Torah Observers, or Shas, draws most of its supporters from low-income, religious Jews of Middle Eastern origin whose spiritual leader is the 88-year-old, Iraqi-born rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Its deal with Netanyahu focused on maintaining welfare benefits. The party, led in parliament by Eli Yishai, is hawkish on Palestinian affairs but does not oppose the principle of giving up land for peace with a future Palestinian state. It does, however, oppose negotiations over Jerusalem.
JEWISH HOME - 3. A small ultra-right religious party opposed to giving up territory for peace. It believes that Jordan, which already has a large Palestinian population, should be the homeland for Palestinians. In signing with Netanyahu, the party said it would focus primarily on education and social issues.
For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to blogs.reuters.com/axismundi
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