Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has signed a deal to give an Israeli government post to an openly homophobic ultra-nationalist party leader.

It is the latest development set to give far-right parties unprecedented power within Israel's ruling coalition.

Avi Maoz will be a deputy minister and run a "Jewish identity" authority.

He heads Noam, a religious-nationalist, anti-Arab and anti-LGBTQ party that argues for a strict interpretation of Jewish religious laws in Israel.

The agreement has added to a growing sense of alarm over the composition of Mr Netanyahu's likely government.

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid has described it as "full-on crazy", while Palestinian leaders have warned about the dangers of an impending "right-wing fascist coalition".

Mr Maoz has described LGBT people as a threat to the family and has said he wants to cancel gay pride parades. His party ran a poster campaign in 2019 with the words "Israel chooses to be normal".

He has also said a woman's greatest's contribution is in marriage and raising a family.

Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories have been in the grip of growing violence this year and opponents fear the new government's positions could quickly aggravate tensions.

Mr Netanyahu has remained largely silent in public since he began coalition talks. But he previously dismissed concerns about the danger of an extremist coalition, saying Israelis had voted for security and a full right-wing government.

His Likud party emerged as the biggest faction in parliament in this month's election. He has been involved in negotiations with other parties to hammer out a coalition agreement, set to usher in the most nationalist and religiously conservative government in Israel's history.

Last week, Likud signed a deal with the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party led by Itamar Ben-Gvir - a gun-brandishing street agitator who has past convictions for racist incitement and supporting a Jewish terrorist group.

Mr Ben-Gvir is set to become national security minister with expanded powers over Israel's militarised police force that operates in the occupied West Bank. He argues for the expulsion from Israel of "disloyal Arabs" and calls for Palestinians who throw stones to be shot by police.

Palestinians have already raised concerns that rhetoric by Mr Ben-Gvir and his co-leader in the Religious Zionism alliance, Bezalel Smotrich, will further empower violence against them by some Jewish settlers in the occupied territories, particularly among their most hardcore supporters.

Avi Maoz is also known for his anti-Palestinian views. Last year, during one of the worst ever periods of inter-communal violence in Israel, he visited the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod and said that the "blurring of the Jewish identity is the cause of the Arab enemy raising his head".

"We will fortify Jewish presence in Lod, and the city will return, God willing, to Jewish hands as it was for hundreds of years," he said.

The outgoing Defence Minister Benny Gantz tweeted on Sunday that Mr Maoz was promoting a "racist identity".

"We will fight this extremist Netanyahu government with all the tools at hand," he insisted.

Mr Maoz's appointment as a deputy minister in the office of the prime minister was described as a new "low point" by the Israeli LGBT rights group Aguda.

"His work revolves around an obsession to take away rights from the LGBTQ+ community and to legitimise hate against it," it said.

He has since denied widespread media reporting that he would reinstate gay conversion therapy, which is outlawed in Israel, and has also said his call to ban gay pride events was not a condition for entering government.

During the election campaign, Mr Netanyahu promised he would safeguard LGBT rights if he became prime minister.

Mr Maoz has framed Israel's future as a battle between the religiously devout and a morally corruptible secular community that dominates state institutions, including the army.

In his election night victory speech, he thanked rabbis "who inspire us to fight against the octopus arms of the postmodernist worldview... [to] fight against tissues infected with this corruption in the education system, academia, the law and even the security forces".

He will also oversee the government agency that promotes Jewish immigration to Israel from former Soviet states, which has seen numbers surge since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. His critics say he would limit those numbers due to his stricter interpretation of what qualifies someone as being Jewish - a highly sensitive issue in Israel.

In a statement on Sunday night, his Noam party said it would work hard for the benefit of the citizens of Israel.

"This is the first step to returning the soul to the country, and returning the country to the path of Jewish identity," it said.

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by Tom Bateman

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