"I can't say the coalition is united. That would be a lie if I told you that," said Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of the Labour Party — the only left-wing group in the government and an advocate of conceding land for peace.
US President Barack Obama's envoy George Mitchell, who is mediating in the "proximity talks," is to resume meetings on Tuesday, in the first substantive sessions since the Palestinians agreed to the indirect negotiations, which have been given a maximum of four months to produce results.
Ben-Eliezer did not give a rundown of where the six Israeli coalition partners stand on the peace process, but he said the skeptical views of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a hawk who leads the rightwing Israel My Home party, were known.
Netanyahu also does not have the wholesale support of his own rightist Likud bloc, the largest in the coalition, according to Ben-Eliezer.
"A majority back the prime minister, but not 100 percent," he told reporters at an informal briefing. Netanyahu had the strong support of younger Likud members, he added.
The Palestinians are deeply and openly divided about peace with Israel. The Islamist Hamas movement controlling the Gaza Strip, where 1.5 million Palestinians live, rejects outright a peace agreement that would recognise the Jewish state.
The Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, which holds sway in the occupied West Bank, agreed under strong US pressure to resume talks, without obtaining the formal Israeli pledge to totally freeze settlements that it had insisted on.
But Ben-Eliezer stressed that "everything is on the table" as talks restart after a long hiatus, including Israeli settlements and the future status of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has pledged that Jerusalem is Israel's eternal capital and will not be divided. The Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of their country under a "two-state solution" — a goal Netanyahu backs in principle.
The Israeli leader is also under pressure from Obama, who says solving the conflict is a "vital security interest" of the United States as it battles anti-Western Islamist militancy.
Unconfirmed Israeli media reports at the weekend said Washington had signalled to Netanyahu that his coalition might sound as defiant as it liked for internal political purposes, provided its actions only advance the peace process. Netanyahu formed the coalition just over 13 months ago after the outgoing center-right Kadima party led by then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni failed to secure a parliamentary majority to carry on in office.
Direct peace talks between that government and the Palestinian Authority of Abbas were showing few outward signs of progress and were suspended in late 2008.
Speculation that Livni might join Netanyahu in a grand coalition with the political power to make major concessions for peace and override the objections of smaller, far-right parties has not so far been borne out.
Kadima is itself struggling with internal divisions.
Ben-Eliezer, a fluent Arab-speaker who has accompanied Netanyahu on three occasions for talks about the stalled peace process with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, said he was convinced that the Israeli leader is determined to make peace.
Labour had joined Netanyahu's coalition in order to use its influence on the inside "to guarantee that the peace process will start."
But the popular mood in Israel is shifting to the right, he added, and "only a right-wing leader can lead such a dramatic breakthrough." He said of Netanyahu: "I believe he can do it."
