JERUSALEM – As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to take office for a third time, his attempts to form a new coalition government have gotten off to a rocky start.

Netanyahu is vowing to form a broad-based government to tackle the country's challenges in the coming years, but that won't be easy. Given the dizzying array of potential coalition partners and their deep differences on key issues, Netanyahu will be hard pressed to build a stable government, much less make significant progress on such divisive matters as drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students into the military and pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

"There are very serious disputes that will be very hard to resolve," Reuven Rivlin, a senior member of Netanyahu's Likud Party, told Israel Radio on Tuesday.