The "national unity" coalition of Mr Ariel Sharon takes office in Israel today, with staunch right-wingers in the ministries that will determine the pace of settlement growth in the occupied territories.
Mr Shimon Peres, the incoming Foreign Minister, will be forced to defend himself against charges from his own Labour Party colleagues that he is being used as a "fig leaf" to mask the government's right-wing tendencies.
Mr Sharon, who was last night completing his final ministerial appointments, is promising to "make every effort to achieve (peace)" while lamenting that "our neighbours have recognised our military might but have not yet recognised our right to the country".
A top military general asserted yesterday that Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was now "protecting terrorists and encouraging terrorism", such as Sunday's suicide bombing in Netanyah. The Hamas Islamic movement yesterday claimed credit for that attack and named the dead bomber as Ahmad Alian (23), from a refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tulkarm.
A mammoth government, with some 29 ministers and another dozen deputy ministers, including the late Yitzhak Rabin's daughter Dalia at Defence, the Sharon coalition is drawn from parties representing about two-thirds of the Knesset. Carpenters have been working non-stop over the past few days to add another table in the centre of the parliamentary plenum.
Mr Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the collapsed peace process with the Palestinians, is the government's most prominent leftwinger; Mr Rehavam Ze'evi, who favours what is delicately termed the "voluntary transfer" of Palestinians to other Arab countries, is its most extreme right-winger.
But while Mr Ze'evi has been appointed to the marginal post of Tourism Minister, two other opponents of generous territorial concessions to the Palestinians and advocates of rapid growth for Jewish settlements, will have real influence: Mr Natan Sharansky, the Russian immigrant leader, is the new Minister of Housing, and Mr Avigdor Lieberman, once the top aide to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been named to the powerhouse Ministry of Infrastructure.
Surprisingly, however, the party most closely associated with the settlers, the National Religious Party, is not joining the government.
Mr Peres, who, with the new Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, will lead Labour's ministerial team, has denied that Mr Sharon is manipulating him and that Labour will have no real influence. Nevertheless, several Labour heavyweights have refused ministerial office.