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The news that Likud leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had finally formed a government which commands the narrowest of Knesset majorities was met with sharp criticism by opposition leaders, while analysts questioned its longevity.

Added to his own Likud Party, the support of Jewish Home, Kulanu and the two ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, gives the new government a single-seat majority in the 120 seat Knesset. Opposition leader and Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog said that its precarious advantage meant that the government is “susceptible to extortion… a narrow, weak government that won’t advance a thing.” He predicted that it would be a government “devoid of responsibility, stability, and an ability to govern” and expressed the hope that it “will be quickly replaced by an alternative that represents hope and responsibility.”

Herzog’s faction co-leader Tzipi Livni said that it wasn’t only the impracticality of the government that made it objectionable. She commented that “the government announced tonight is not good for Israel in its manner, worldview, values, objectives.” Meanwhile, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid called the new government “narrow, suspicious and sectorial” and pledged to oppose it in the Knesset, the courts and in the streets.

In this morning’s Israeli dailies, a number of commentators took aim at Netanyahu’s new government and the preceding period of negotiations. In Yediot Ahronot, Sima Kadmon reflects on “how a crushing victory in the elections [for Netanyahu] turned into a farce of a kind never seen before” in which potential coalition partners had their demands met on a plate. In Maariv, Ben Caspit says that Netanyahu “became intoxicated by the results of the elections” and will consequently preside over a government “whose ability to survive crises and to push through reforms is next to nil.” Eitan Haber in Yediot Ahronot predicts that “The coalition chairman is going to have to be a magician and a contortionist to maintain a permanent majority.”