What guidelines are being demanded or agreed to regarding the peace process, gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians and freezes. Nobody seems to be talking about this or about Iran for that matter. Ted Belman
With less than two weeks left to form a government, Netanyahu appears to have no choice but to team up with Jewish Home and Yesh Atid, and Likud sources said Monday they expected an agreement by week’s end.
Yesh Atid will ask for the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education and Social Affairs. In addition, Lapid will seek to have his party chair the Knesset’s finance and constitution committees, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday. For his part, Bennett will seek the Industry, Housing and Religious Affairs ministries, and possibly one additional portfolio, the report said.
One complication may lie in the fact Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, whose party ran with Netanyahu’s Likud on a joint slate in the recent elections, has indicated that Netanyahu is holding the foreign minister post for him. Liberman stepped down as foreign minister after his indictment late last year on charges of fraud and breach of trust and has indicated that he will only rejoin the Cabinet if he is exonerated.
Lapid and Bennett have also expressed reservations regarding a pact Likud-Beytenu made with Hatnua, which granted the centrist party’s leader, Tzipi Livni, the role of justice minister and chief of negotiations with the Palestinians.
In addition to the Cabinet portfolios, Lapid has made it clear that he wants Netanyahu to establish a government with a significantly smaller number of ministries than the current 30. Initially, he demanded that the number of ministers be restricted to 18, but is now willing to allow as many as 24.
Yesh Atid garnered 19 Knesset seats in the January 22 election, second only to Likud-Beytenu’s 31. It has been working together with the 12-seat Jewish Home party to demand new legislation to draft most ultra-Orthodox young men. The ultra-Orthodox parties are opposed to such a drastic change, and Netanyahu has thus far been unable to resolve this and other differences between his potential coalition partners.
On Sunday, the prime minister held a three-hour meeting with Bennett and Liberman. The meeting was described afterward as “positive and productive” by Jewish Home officials. The three party leaders discussed a universal draft and the possibility of having Jewish Home join the governing coalition, but made no clear breakthrough.
In a meeting on Sunday with Shas heads Eli Yishai, Aryeh Deri and Ariel Atias, Netanyahu said he’d like to see the ultra-Orthodox party join the coalition, but that “political complications” were standing in his way.
Netanyahu received on Saturday a 14-day extension to form a government from President Shimon Peres. The prime minister now has until March 16 to form a governing coalition, or see the task assigned to a rival politician or face new elections.
Sources in Likud, as well as in the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, have accused the Lapid-Bennett bloc faction of “boycotting” the ultra-Orthodox by refusing to sit in a coalition with them.
On Monday morning, MK Shai Piron, number 2 on the Yesh Atid list, dismissed the accusations.
“The fact that the Haredim will sit in the opposition certainly does not mean that we hate them,” Piron told Channel 10. “There is no boycott and exclusion of a community… it is a matter of ideological disagreement.”
Piron said there has been a “long history of conduct among the ultra-Orthodox that has led to unacceptable behavior,” noting that Yesh Atid wants to make changes “not without the Haredim, but without Haredi politics.”
Comparing the current situation to a soccer match, Piron said that “sometimes a person has to receive a yellow card” — a warning — in order to make a substantial change, “and that is what has happened.”
Regardless of internal politics, IL needs a united front against possible onslaught from the West.
It’s good to hear these predictions of Bibi’s political demise. The sooner the better I say.
@ NormanF:
Excellent comment.
Netanyahu is for all practical purposes ending his career and is at his most dangerous as the Nobel is fading, perhaps. Within the likud he is already history, even if to cover appearances the power brokers let him cackle.
Remarkably the forecasters fail to factor in Mr. Lieberman’s 12 mandates and so far no representation in the cabinet. Assuming that being the case is utter nonsense.
Of the likud 19 mandates Netanyahu can possibly count with 10 at best.
We may see a very short lived tenure.
Both Bennett and Lapid know they can now trounce Netanyahu in new elections…
@ NormanF:
I hope you are right; for the sake of the Jewish nation and the Jewish state. But I have learned to be wary of entrapment to expectations of what elected officials will or will not do, based on political assumptions which may lack validity solid enough to bank on such expectations. As a trained city and regional planner, I also have learned that the nature of plans is such that their implementation rarely proceed in exact accordance to the planning on which they are based.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
ArnoldHarris Said:
Its true that he could buy Shas and UTJ but Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi seem serious about domestic policy reforms and while Netanyahu would preferred to do as little as possible on any front by maintaining the status quo, his hand has now been forced. There are going to be some changes now where he likes them or not and if he thinks they’re wrong, he can always ask the voters to settle the argument.
@ NormanF:
Norman, either of Netanyahu’s main coalition partners bringing down his government over policy issues is not necessarily as predictable as some may hope. Netanyahu is a typical politician, and is not above buying loyalty for expenditure of what he probably considers small political money. I understand that is what he and other Israeli governments have been doing with Shas and possibly some of the other religious parties for many decades. Politicians are as purchasable as postage stamps.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Netanyahu is being forced to bring in Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi because he has little time left and entreaties to Labor and the Haredim to join his coalition have not borne fruit. Its a humiliating climbdown but he could spared himself all the drama a month ago by quickly concluding a coalition deal with the nezt two largest parties in the Knesset. His attempts to sunder their alliance have resoundingly failed. He is going to have to form a government in which he will not be calling the shots and in which his coalition partners can bring him down at a time convenient for them.