ERUSALEM — The ultra-Orthodox Shas Party said Friday that it would not join a government that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is trying to assemble. If that decision stands, it will be a major blow to her efforts to become prime minister and avoid early elections.
At the same time, Ms. Livni reached an agreement in principle with the left-wing Meretz Party to join her government and was negotiating with another ultra-Orthodox party, Yahadut Hatorah. Together they would make up for the loss of Shas and give her a majority in the 120-seat Parliament.
Shas, the fourth largest party and part of the departing government, said it had failed to reach agreement with Ms. Livni over the two issues that matter most to it — increasing child allowances for large families and a promise to keep Jerusalem entirely under Israeli sovereignty and off the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
While Shas spokesmen said the decision to stay out was final, others suggested that the move was a risky negotiating tactic that could still be reversed.
“I do not see this as the end of the story with Shas,” said Otniel Schneller, a Parliament member from Ms. Livni’s Kadima Party, in a telephone interview, making a point echoed by others. “I think we can still find a creative formula for Jerusalem and bring them back.”
Meanwhile Meretz, on the left, has been in talks all week with Ms. Livni.
“We decided that we are in the government and now are setting about writing the agreement,” Avshalom Vilan, a Parliament member from Meretz, said by telephone. “I believe Livni will try to build a government with what she has rather than go to early elections.”
So far, Ms. Livni has a clear deal only with the Labor Party, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Mr. Barak wants as broad a government as possible because he worries that a narrow one will not last and will lead inevitably to early elections in which the opposition Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is ahead in the polls.
An associate of Mr. Barak said he would be willing to move forward if both Meretz and Yahadut Hatorah signed on, bringing her governing majority to 66.
“If she will have 66 members, Barak won’t be an obstacle, though he is not excited about this,” the associate said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Ms. Livni announced this week that she would decide Sunday whether to try to form a government or move toward early elections. Monday is the official opening of the parliamentary session, and if she does not have a government by then, the departing prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is leaving to fight corruption charges, will make the day’s major speech, not she. Her aides say she considers this both politically and symbolically highly undesirable. She has also said she must draw a limit to negotiations.
At the same time, Ms. Livni, who has risen rapidly in Israeli politics on a reputation of honesty and lack of corruption, is losing some of her luster. Her efforts to form a government have not gone well and have shown her horse-trading over budgets and positions.
Nahum Barnea, the country’s top political columnist, wrote in Friday’s issue of Yediot Aharonot newspaper an article headlined “Tzipi in Wonderland,” in which he enumerated the political debate over the errors she was perceived to have committed. They included having involved herself too personally in the negotiations and having mishandled Mr. Barak to having relied on lieutenants viewed as insufficiently seasoned.
He added: “She has innocence, and she has love of the homeland, in the good old sense of the word. But in the cruel game that she has chosen to participate, innocence is at most grounds for leniency. Livni paid too much for too little. She paid in hard cash: in money and in leadership.”
The Barak associate likewise criticized Ms. Livni’s handling of the negotiations, primarily her failure to bring Shas on board but also her style, saying: “She has a tendency to impose deadlines when they are not necessary. Why Sunday? Why not Wednesday? Sometimes, you just have to negotiate.”
In an unrelated development, 600 Palestinian security officers, some of them trained under American auspices in Jordan, were expected to take up new positions in the West Bank city of Hebron this weekend, the next stage in a process of their taking greater responsibility from Israeli forces.
Hebron’s volatile Jewish settlers have complained about the Palestinian deployment, saying the officers are terrorists in disguise. But Israeli military officials say their faith in the Palestinian forces has been growing with more cooperation, even in foiling efforts byHamas to carry out attacks.
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