Israel Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman will meet with Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday to make his demands and reveal his red lines regarding portfolios for his party in the next government.
Netanyahu's associates are hoping that Lieberman will show flexibility on at least one of his top demands in Thursday's meeting, to allow the Likud leader to form a government that could last.
They said they hoped Lieberman would agree to accept the Finance portfolio and allow Netanyahu to pacify his Likud nemesis, MK Silvan Shalom, by allowing him to return to the Foreign Ministry.
"Netanyahu knows that when his coalition is [as] unstable as it is, he cannot afford to also have problems inside his own party and that having Shalom as an enemy is very bad," a source close to the Likud leader said. "We are waiting to hear Lieberman's red lines. Lieberman understands that he can push pretty far but that he must stop at some point. He realizes what the public can stand, and he doesn't want the government to fall. We hope that his brains overcome his ambitions."
