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Second Ya'alon Cabinet
The Thirty-third Government of Israel or the Second Ya'alon Cabinet has been led by Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon and his Likud ("Consolidation") party since its victory in the 2013 elections. Ya'alon's government currently has 65 out of 120 seats in the Knesset, with his Likud party having nearly half of the total, with 27. The remaining 28 seats are scattered among other right-wing parties in the government: the religious Zionist Mafdal (10), secular hard-right Our Home (10) and the ultra-orthodox The Jewish Union (8).

The government has overseen a continued crackdown on the Palestinians in the West Bank following Operation Righteous, despite international opposition, including from the Riley administration. Prime Minister Ya'alon has similarly continued Israeli settlement policies in the Palestinian territories acquired in the Six-Day War of 1967 despite unanimous international opposition. As such, there has been little progress made in negotiations with the Palestinians, although the post-Yarafat fracturing of the Palestinian leadership has not given him a single negotiating partner who can command legitimacy to most, if not all, Palestinians.

With Knesset elections due later in the year, polls seem to be leaning towards Ya'alon's right-wing coalition returning for a third term with the center-left opposition in disarray. The task for opposing Ya'alon has fallen to former Likudnik Tzipi Livni as leader of the Zionist Union, a large electoral alliance staunchly opposed to the former Israeli Defense Force general-turned-prime minister and his right-wing government's hawkish stance towards the Palestinian conflict- perhaps a telling sign of the formerly solidly left-wing nation's shift to the right since the midpoint of the 20th century.

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