Gantz, Ya’alon are breaking their pre-election promise not to build coalition with anti-Zionist Arab parties.
By Yochanan Visser, INN 09/03/20 19:28
On Monday, Blue and White, the party that lost the latest Israeli election to Likud, entered into coalition negotiations with Yisrael Beyteinu, a staunchly anti-Arab party, and the Joint List of Arab parties, a coalition of anti-Israeli parties.
By entering these negotiations Blue and White effectively broke one of its most important election promises, namely that it would not build a coalition with the Arab parties but instead would form a “Jewish majority coalition” as Benny Gantz the leader of the party promised before the elections.
Hatred for Likud leader and current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was apparently so overwhelming that Blue and White also is willing to endanger the State of Israel, as we will see.
After he faced harsh criticism for using the term “Jewish majority coalition” on televsion, Gantz backed-down, apologized and claimed he had meant “Zionist majority coalition”.Lapid did the same.
Blue and White isn’t able to form such a coalition, however, since it has, together with the joint list of Meretz-Gesher-Labor as well as Yisrael Beyteinu only 47 seats in the new Knesset to Netanyahu’s 58 seat strong bloc of Likud, Shas, Agudah and Yamina.
So, Gantz, in order to form a coalition will need to bow to the demands of the Joint List that won 15 seats in the new Knesset on March 2.
These demands might be good for the Arab population in Israel but they are a disaster for Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and they will endanger the security of the state.
During an interview with Galai Tzhal (Army Radio) in Israel, Mtanes Shihadeh, the leader of the staunch anti-Israeli Balad party, a member of the Arab joint list announced its demands in exchange for support for the minority coalition.
Shihadeh said “the Joint List won’t repeat the mistake of three months ago to recommend (Kachol Lavan’s) Benny Gantz without any commitment, without any agreement, without anything written.”
The Balad leader then accused Gantz of betraying the Arab parties when after he got the nomination to form a government, the Blue and White leader adopted Likud’s positions on a range of issues.
“The Joint List made its recommendation and Gantz basically broke right, adopting all the Likud party’s positions,” Shihadeh said.
After the September election, Balad declined to recommend tasking Gantz with forming a coalition but now says it will respect a majority decision on the issue by the other Arab parties.
The list of demands by the Joint List is long and includes measures that will endanger the Jewish character of Israel as well as the country’s security.
Shihadeh told the Army Radio that the Joint List will demand the annulment of the Kaminitz Law dealing with illegal construction and the Nation State Law.
A Gantz led government would have to adopt a NIS 64 billion economic program to improve the economic situation of the Arab minority in Israel. The Arab parties also want a peace process with the Palestinian Arabs that must be based on the so-called Two-State-Solution with borders that would be indefensible, in other words, a return to the 1948 armistice lines.
The Balad leader said the Joint List will also demand “a change in the status of the Arab population in Israel, and annulment of (what he said were) discriminatory laws that significantly change the standing of the Arab population.”
This includes annulment of the so-called Nation-State law that determined Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Another law that the Joint List wants to be annulled is the so-called Kaminitz Law, a 2017 amendment to the Planning and Building Law, which was aimed at strengthening “enforcement and penalization of planning and building offenses.”
The amendment of the law was meant to end rampant illegal building in the Israeli Arab sector but the Joint List says Israel created a severe housing crisis in Arab cities and villages by applying “systematic discrimination” in state land planning and allocation of land for construction purposes.
Israel must also abandon its plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria the Joint Arab list demands before it will support a Gantz minority government.
Gantz and other Blue and White leaders stated before the elections that they were in favor of applying at least Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley albeit with the support of the international community, something that will never happen.
A manifesto titled “Peace among the nations and national rights” that appears on the Facebook page of the Joint List, furthermore, demands the end to the “occupation of all Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories captured in 1967.”
Israel must “uproot all the settlements and the racist partition fence” says the Joint List in reference to the security fence Israel built to halt the wave of suicide bombings during the so-called Second Intifada, Yasser Arafat’s war against Israeli citizens.
Israel must also free all “political prisoners and set up an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital” according to the manifesto.
The Joint list also adopted the long-standing PA demand that Israel allows the implementation of the non-existing ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arab “refugees”.
According to the Joint List’s parliamentary platform the Arab parties also support the violent Palestinian Arab struggle against “the occupation and their struggle for freedom” and reject US President Trump’s new plan for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Joint List also wants Israel to lift the non-existing blockade of the Gaza Strip and rejects the Israeli demand that the PA leadership recognizes Israel as a Jewish state.
The fate of the coalition Gantz eyes is now in the hands of two Blue and White MKs Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser who are reportedly vehemently opposed to the idea of outside support for a minority coalition by the Joint List. MK Hili Tropper has also declared he will oppose the coalition.
If Hauser and Hendel defect to Likud and do not resign from the Knesset as Gantz and Bogie Yaalon demand, the whole situation could change and help the forming of a right-wing government according to the will of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people as expressed by the latest election results.
“Blue and White MK: ‘We’ll activate our majority on Monday’
‘Nothing is off the table, our goal is that Gantz will be asked to form a government,’ MK Ofer Shelah says.
Arutz Sheva Staff, 11/03/20 09:16
Ofer Shelah
Ofer ShelahHadas Parush/Flash90
MK Ofer Shelah (Blue and White) on Wednesday expressed faith that his party would be able to form a government.
“We are working to do two things immediately – to consolidate a majority of Knesset members who will recommend [Blue and White Chairman MK Benny] Gantz to the President, and to consolidate a majority who will begin making the Knesset function,” Shelah told Reshet Bet.
“We will activate our majority on Monday.”
He also said that the refusal of MK Orly Levi-Abekasis to join a minority government does not affect Gantz’s chances of success.
“Nothing is off the table. Our goal is to reach 61 so that Gantz will be tasked with forming a government. Even those who said they oppose a minority government will recommend Gantz. We will have a majority even without Orly Levi-Abekasis, we are working to garner a majority so that [President Reuven] Rivlin will ask Gantz [to form a government].” “
Amazing!
Is there another country in the world that permits its worst enemies dedicated to its destruction to sit in its parliament, to reside in the country as full citizens, that permits its generals to travel the world lobbying against that country’s best interests, whose top military men freely advocate for the enemy’s interests?
If it is done in the name of democracy, how about some neo-Nazi parties to add to the mix to strengthen the democracy?
Dishonest double-speak from Lapid:
“Left: We will use Arab MKs just to swear in a government
Blue and White Co-Chairman Yair Lapid explains in Facebook post that despite lacking a majority in the Knesset, Left will try to get a government sworn in with the help of the Arab parties.
by Danielle Roth-Avneri Published on 03-10-2020 18:34 Last modified: 03-10-2020 18:39
Blue and White: We won’t insist on Lapid-Gantz rotating premiership
Blue and White No. 2 Yair Lapid discussed the possibility of forming a minority government with support from the Joint Arab List on Tuesday, saying, “The Joint List will vote once from outside … and that’s where it will end.”
In a post on his own Facebook page, Lapid explained: “There are two tough possibilities, and one is not a possibility. The best possibility is the one Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is rejecting outright – a national unity government. That’s what we’ve always wanted, and that’s what we’d be happy to do today. Unity with a rotation [for prime minister].”
In the Israeli parliamentary system, a government can be formed only if it gets the approval of the Knesset through a confidence vote.”
From today’s Israel Hayom.
@ Edgar G.: All excellent ideas, Edgar.
“Government forming? Blue and White heads meet with Liberman
Meeting between Gantz, Lapid, Ya’alon, Ashkenazi with Yisrael Beyteinu Chair called very good; Blue and White to meet with Joint Arab List.
Liberman (C) with Blue and White heads
Blue and White Chairman MK Benny Gantz today met with Yisrael Beyteinu Chairman MK Avigdor Liberman.
Knesset Members Yair Lapid, Moshe Ya’alon, and Gabi Ashkenazi attended the meeting.
“The meeting was good and relevant with the intention of forming a government and preventing fourth elections,” the two parties said.”
From tonight’s Arutz Sheva.
The only cure for the Netanyahu disease, that affects the otherwise unstable mentalities of the Blue&White Leadership, is to strongly concentrate on pulling over the disaffected B&W MKs and the others who are also strongly opposed to Gantz’s clumsy machinations. Ignore Lieberman, he’s totally untrustworthy, in his plotting against his long-time allies..
Otherwise go to a 4th election -blaming Gantz and Lieberman. Gantz has now “dirtied his bib” sufficiently to disqualify him from any future leadership role.
We need a govt, that can be TRUSTED.
If nothing else, any alliance with B&W, which would give Gantz a powerful position such as PM, would be just as much of a disaster as, Arabs in the coalition. Just think what bumbling and wrong, weak, irresolute decisions such a, incompetent man could make, He could destroy in a week,what it took Netanyahu and LIKUD 10 years to build….
I’m laying it on thick of course, but not by all that much, and this is a situation that I have so-far not seen anyone consider..
Before handing over to Gantz ( and his Cabal) for his 2 year stint, a new department called “The Gantz-Watchers and Minders” would have to be formed.with formidable powers……(it would need to include a brilliant psychiatrist capable of certifying sanity-or lack thereof).
“Gesher party leader MK Orly Levy-Abekasis announced Tuesday night that she would not support the formation of a minority government which is dependent on the outside support of the Joint Arab List.
“We are all witnessing leaders who have pledged credibility and accountability, are currently engaged in shameful lobbying and willing to pay any cost to any minority government, even if it is set up on an unreliable support. Equally worrisome is the fact that far-reaching decisions like negotiating the joint list, including Balad, are being conducted in a very limited circle, whose acceptance would require all Knesset members to join the bloc,” Levy-Abekasis said.”
From tonight’s Arutz Sheva.