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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. If President Obama wants to make any progress in the Middle East, he'll have to deal with Benjamin Netanyahu. The leader of Israel's right-wing Likud Party looks set to become his country's new Prime Minister. Israeli President Shimon Peres today officially asked Netanyahu to form a government. The World's Quil Lawrence is in Jerusalem. So we're going to get to how this might affect US foreign policy in a moment, Quil, but first Netanyahu and Likud didn't win the most votes in last week's election, so why did Peres choose Netanyahu to lead the government now?

QUIL LAWRENCE: You're right. Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party won one more seat, one more vote than Netanyahu did, but it was very clear even on election night, that Netanyahu had the only formula to get himself to the civil majority of Knesset seats, up to 61 seats in the Parliament he needed to form a government. So the President officially calls upon one of the leaders of parties to form a government, and it was clear that Tzipi Livni couldn't do it.

WERMAN: What happens now? How does this actually work? Netanyahu has six weeks to create a coalition, right? So what's he got going in his favor and what does he have going against him to make that government happen?

LAWRENCE: Well, tonight without cutting any new deals he could assemble this right-wing coalition with just 65 seats. But everyone knows, including Netanyahu by all appearances, that that would be a very fragile coalition. He would have to make promises to each of these members that they would be constantly holding him to. It would be very hard to govern. And in the past, he's had this narrow right-wing coalition, and it didn't last very long. People are saying if he forms it, it wouldn't probably last more than 18 months. He doesn't want to do that. He's called on the other major parties – Livni's Kadima and Ehud Barak's Labor Party to join him in a broad coalition government.

WERMAN: Now, Tzipi Livni is still out there – former candidate and foreign minister Tzipi Livni. This is how she reacted to the prospect of joining a coalition led by someone with such a different political outlook to her own. So what she's saying here is that “a coalition has been formed. It's a coalition without a political vision. A coalition that will not allow me to implement my vision, Kadima's vision, the vision we presented to the voters.” So Quil, that doesn't really sound like much of an endorsement.

LAWRENCE: No. She's essentially saying that in order to sign up, she would have to sacrifice all of her principles. Now, Tzipi Livni is seen as the one candidate of these major party leaders who ran on integrity, essentially. The other leaders have been around long enough that the voters consider them to be a little bit unreliable, a little bit pragmatic, wanting to stay in governments regardless of which parts of their party's platforms they have to give away to stay in office. So on the one hand, Tzipi Livni might be saying, “I'm going to go into the opposition and show you I am indeed a woman of principle” and will come back all that much stronger in a year or two years' time. On the other hand, she could just be playing hard to get and talking up the price for her to join such a government. And we'll have to see in the next days and maybe weeks which it is.

WERMAN: Well, let's assume that Benjamin Netanyahu successfully navigates and negotiates through the next six weeks. He forms a government and again becomes Israel's Prime Minister. What will that mean for the United States and for the Obama administration's intentions in the region?

LAWRENCE: Well, the US of course has been saying that they have no opinion, that they aren't going to make any statements or interfere at all in Israel's internal politics. But of the candidates who are going, Netanyahu would have to be the one with, I suppose, the worst record in Washington. During the Clinton years, there were several key aides in the Middle East who have since written books -- and what they had to say about Netanyahu was not very flattering. Now, of course, that was ten years ago. He may have changed his approach and may be looking towards more of a constructive relationship with Washington, but we'll have to see. So far we just know that George Mitchell, who's the special envoy for the Obama adminstration to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been in the past a hawk about settlement expansion. And Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he's not going to restrict settlement expansion.

WERMAN: In other words, George Mitchell wants to clamp down on settlement expansion?

LAWRENCE: That's right. And we could see these two probably locking horns very early on.

WERMAN: The World's Quil Lawrence, in Jerusalem. Thanks a lot.

LAWRENCE: Thank you, Marco.

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