The existing literature on coalition formation and survival has made great strides in furthering our understanding of these processes. However, this literature is based on established democracies, primarily in Western Europe, with proportional representation electoral systems. This chapter examines coalition formation in the MENA, with a goal to understanding failures in the processes of coalition formation and coalition survival. The cases of Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories offer a controlled comparison of most-similar cases, due their shared history of British mandates, government formation under foreign occupation, high levels of corruption in existing governments and histories of identity-based conflict. We seek to expand coalition theory to these cases. A recurrent theme in the literature is how past experience and institutional setting affects coalition negotiations. New democracies lack factors such as political party system institutionalization that is assumed in established democracies. We highlight these factors, along with the role played by foreign actors, in explaining coalition failures in Iraq and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These institutional factors, combined with religious-secular divisions (leading to parties that base their success on exploiting these differences), makes it difficult for coalitions to form and once formed, these coalitions are very vulnerable to collapse. Iraq has seen multiple governments form and collapse both under occupation of coalition forces and since the withdrawal of the last US armed brigade in 2010. For example, the most recent attempt to form a government in Iraq collapsed twice before a somewhat stable government formation could be achieved. Eventually, a multi-party coalition took over in 2020 but announced early elections less than a year later for 2021, a clear signal that this coalition will not be able to survive its full term. Palestinians have limited experience coalition building due to the very few parliamentary elections they have conducted (1996 and 2006). Due to the international boycott of Hamas, whose Change and Reform party won the 2006 election, Palestinians struggled to form a government that would be recognized by the international community. Since then, internal divisions and external interference have hampered any efforts by the major Palestinian factions to reach a functional working relationship. The lack of Palestinian elections since 2006 combined with the existence of two rival governments is perhaps the most notable outcome of coalition failure in the Palestinian case.