Likud and Labor mayors met to discuss possible cooperation.
By Hezki Baruch, INN
Amir Peretz, Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90
Likud and Labor municipality leaders called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to form a right-wing government alongside Amir Peretz’s Labor party.
Leaders of the Likud and Labor factions convened at the Center for Local Government. Maaleh Adumim mayor Benny Kashriel and Yokneam mayor Shimon Alfasi, called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a coalition of the right-wing bloc with the Labor Party.
“The order of the hour is the establishment of a broad government in collaboration with the Labor Party, based on common grounds and a social economic outline that will address various issues and social agendas of the Labor and Likud parties for strengthening of the State of Israel,” the two stated in a letter addressed to the prime minister.
They added, “Unfortunately, the results of the 23rd Knesset election indicate that none of the blocs failed to reach the coveted 61 seats and therefore cannot form a government. The [primary concern at the present moment] is the establishment of a coalition.”
“The people of Israel expect a government to emerge and a fourth election avoided. Therefore, there is no [other] choice but to form a broad government that will include Zionist Knesset members, supporters of the State of Israel dedicated to its wellbeing.”
@ Bear Klein: My God, let’s hope so. I understand they are under a lot of pressure from Gantz to “tow the line.I guess we will just have to wait. This is a time of high drama in Israeli politics.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Reportedly, Blue and White MKs expected to block move for minority gov’t
Benny Gantz expected to encounter opposition from MKs Hauser and Hendel to move for minority gov’t with outside support from Joint List. The former Likud members who used to work for Bibi. Hopefully this holds up.
@ Bear Klein: Apparently the depths of politicians perfidy and willingness to break their promises. no matter how emphatic and frequently repeated, knows no limits. I hope that if the rumors about Leiberman’s betrayal prove to be true, his own party will rebel against him and refuse to go along.
It is reported in all of the English-language Israeli media that Gantz did notinclude the exclusion of the Joint List or a minority government based on their support from his list of demands for joining a Blue-White coalition. As I noted before, that is an ominous sign. The only demands he made related to increased pensions for the elderly abolition of the Chief rabbinate’s control over marriage, divorce and conversion, and his original haredi draft law.
I just a video on twitter were Gantz was recorded 25 times with reporters saying in “NO Way would the Joint List be part of his government in any manner because they do not agree to a Jewish and democratic state.”
His statements were in Hebrew this is my translation
Reportedly, Blue and White MKs expected to block move for minority gov’t
Benny Gantz expected to encounter opposition from MKs Hauser and Hendel to move for minority gov’t with outside support from Joint List.
For anyone who may not know Hauser and Hendel are right-wingers who used to be in the Likud (working directly for Bibi) but like a long list of good people had a personal falling out with Machavelli (Netenyahu). They are in the Telem wing of Blue/White. If they do not go along with the minority government scheme they will fall two votes short.
So if this hopefully true then there will likely be a fourth election, even though some are working on a unity government to which I am skeptical.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276974
From this morning’s Arutz Sheva:
“Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz warned on Friday that Israel’s next political murder could be “around the corner” due to incitement by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”
“The incitement to violence has crossed all the lines. If we don’t wake up, the next political murder is around the corner,” he wrote in a post to supporters.”
This is a very sinister threat. Shortly before the Rabin assasssination happened, the Jerusalem Post reported (in a column by its late editor David Bar-Ilan, Of Blessed Memory), that there was a round-table panel discussion on Israeli TV about the likely effects of an assassination of Rabin–Before it happened. Also shortly before the assassination, the then Minister of Police, a Labor Party man, joined with several other Labor MKs (I think about nine memory is correct) in issuing a written press release to the effect that unless the Right and Likud, and Netanyahu stopped their allegedly vicious attacks on Rabin and the Labor government, a high government official (unnamed) was likely to be assassinated. The MKs and the minister of police also alleged that extreme right wing groups were already planning such an assassination.
Although a few books were published after the assassination alleging that a conspiracy by and senior Labor Party officials who were rivals of Rabin were behind it, they all failed to pick up on these two reports in the Jerusalem Post, which would have bolstered their case.. But I noticed them and clipped them out and filed them. I’ve still got the clippings, now almost certainly yellowed with age,in storage.
Once the assassination actually happened, the Left immediately adopted exactly the same line as these “prophets,” blaming the assassination on the Likud’s , and Netanyahu’s, supposed “incitement.” And they are still blaming Netanyahu and Likud for that assasination today.
In fact, Gantz referred to that assassination in the past when warning that the same thing was likely to happen in the near future. Like his Labor predecessors, Gantz is turning “prophet.” Since the earlier “prophesies” of Rabin’s assassination by his supposed supporters came to pass, there is not reason for us to assume that Gantz is ill-informed.
This time, the assassination target of the Left is almost certainly Netanyahu. Even as he warned of an impending assassination, Gantz breathed fire and brimstone at Netanyahu. He and the other “left-center” leaders have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to remove Netanyahu from office.
Apparently, Gantz and others may be moving towards a decision that because their parliamentary and judicial maneuvers to force Netanyahu have failed, and the electorate has refused to rally to their cause, there is now only one way to get rid of the man they hate so much.
@ Bear Klein:
Thanks for this comment.
@ Bear Klein: A very sinister development that reveals the true character of the Blue-White people and (possibly) Leiberman as well.
There is also some media involvement with this conspiracy. Both the Jerusalem Post (co-owned with Ma’ariv) and Yenetnews (sister publication of Yediot Arrant) have published editorials calling for the Joint List to play a role in the next government. They both argue that excluding the Joint List parties from power amounts to disenfranchising the Arab population, which is nearly a fourth of the entire population. Bringing the (anti-Zionist, pro-PLO) parties into the government would rectify a “historic injustice,” these editorials claim.
Whether the Blue-White leaders are responding to pressure from the media, or the media is simply reporting their “off the record” views, is unknown to me.
If Blue/White do the unthinkable (to me anyway) and partner with the Arab Joint List they will lose lots of true Zionist Supporters forever and be viewed as traitors.
“Key Ya’alon Supporter Denounces Blue&White’s Plan for Parliamentary Coup d’État
“Bogie Ya’alon announced that he is ready for a minority government supported from the outside by the Joint anti-Israel Arab List, this is a violation of his promise to the voter,” Uri Heitner, one of the early supporters of former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon when he established his Telem Party in January, 2019, posted on Facebook Thursday night.
Heitner’s credentials read like the epitome of a moderate Israeli: he is a publicist and an educator, senior researcher at the Shamir Institute for Research, member of Kibbutz Ortal also on the Golan, served a number of terms as secretary-general of his kibbutz, worked as youth guide, was the spokesman for the Golan communities, Director of the Golan Community Center network, and Director of the Yuvalim Center for Jewish Culture and Identity at Tel Hai College.
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One couldn’t imagine a more attractive, clean cut profile of the sort of Israeli activists who decided it was time to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a better leader.
“Ahead of the elections for the 21st Knesset, I decided to join political life in Telem — a national movement, led by Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon,” he wrote in 2019. “I joined the Telem movement out of my concern for the future of Israeli society. Our society is splitting into two progressively extremist camps, to the point of tearing apart and hatred between them – the left and right camps. National solidarity is giving way to tribal solidarity, and even the solidarity of each camp with a global camp – the international right and international left, both of which include anti-Semitic elements. Each camp is dragged after its extremist base, and this trend, which I call “baseaucracy,” could lead to the collapse of Israeli society.”
Back in January 2019, Heitner suggested Ya’alon’s new movement offered a path that avoided the growing extremism in both camps: “I firmly believe in the Zionist golden path – in national pride that isn’t nationalistic, in total devotion to the substance and identity of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people; a democratic Jewish state that grants civil equality to all. I believe in deepening Zionist education and instilling the values of Zionism for future generations.”
Thursday night, Heitner wrote, Ya’alon had betrayed all of those values when he joined with his fellow leaders at Blue&White – Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid and Gabi Ashkenazi, to establish a minority government that would lean on the temporary support of two outsiders: Avigdor Liberman’s Israel Beiteinu and the Joint Arab List.
“A government that would depend on the ill will of the List from the outside is even worse than having the Arab List as part of the coalition,” Heitner argued, “Because with them remaining on the outside, every legislation would entail coalition negotiations. It would be a government under permanent extortion, with Arafat’s consultant (Ahmad Tibi – DI) sticking his gun to its head.”
“This is not the Telem I joined as soon as Bogie retired from the government and the Knesset,” the disillusioned Heitner wrote. “I do not belong to this Telem.”
“I never was and will never be any leader’s blind supporter,” he continued. “When Rabin violated his commitment and negotiated a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, we told him that if we had to choose between our loyalty to him and our loyalty to the Golan, we chose the Golan.”
“Today, I tell Bogie Ya’alon that if I have to choose between my loyalty to him and my loyalty to our path, I remain loyal to the path. If Bogie veered from the path – I’m not with him. I hope that [rightwing Blue &White MKs] Yoaz Handel and Zvika Hauser frustrate this attempt (to join forces with the Arabs to unseat Bibi – DI),” he wrote.
Heitner concluded his post in parenthesis: (I wish Bogie would put out a release saying this is fake news. Nothing would make me happier than to have to delete this post. But from the inquiries I’ve made so far, it’s probably the truth).”
Supposedly Blue/White has Yaalon’s support to try and form a government with the Arab Joint List. He has not denied it.
Odeh has demanded for this support: The Three No’s:
No “Jewish Majority” Coalition
No Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria
No ministerial position for Avigdor Liberman
Joint List Party leader Ayman Odeh said on Thursday if Blue and White leader Benny Gantz must back down from the idea of a “Jewish majority” coalition and abandon efforts to extend Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria before the Joint List can recommend that he form Israel’s next government.
Could they actually really do this? Is their hate for Bibi greater than their love for Israel?
Except is Labor going to vote against being PM again while under indictment?
So is this article relevant?