Israel’s governing coalition on Sunday faced a new split when Arab-Israeli party Raam “suspended” its membership, after violence around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that wounded 170 people over the weekend.
The government — an ideologically disparate mix of left-wing, hardline Jewish nationalist and religious parties, as well as Raam — had already lost its razor-thin majority this month when a religious Jewish member quit in a dispute over leavened bread distribution at hospitals.
Since then, days of violence around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque complex, sacred to Muslims and Jews, put Raam under pressure to quit, too.
“If the government continues its steps against