Buildingsgroanin'

The U.S. has the occasional chaos of the balance of powers. Israel has the even greater chaos of coalition government. Even as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received praise as word leaked out of a five-month-long suspension of government-sponsored settlement projects on the West Bank, the "Economist" reported:

[F]our of his more hawkish ministers...chose to tour several of the “illegal” settlement-outposts on the West Bank which the government has pledged to dismantle. These settlements were not illegal, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party declared. Moshe Ya’alon of the Likud, one of Mr Netanyahu’s two vice-prime ministers, said the government should seriously consider restoring the settlement of Homesh which Israel dismantled as part of Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank in 2005. Mr Netanyahu’s office said nothing.