Cleaning out the cabinet

A quarrel between senior ministers always makes for good headlines, and all the more so when the fiery exchange may result in the actual dismissal of one of the parties involved. Case in point: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented scolding of Education Minister Naftali Bennett during a meeting of the key decision-making security cabinet yesterday leads both of the country’s major tabloids, though the angle from which each paper chooses to view the incident says more about the media outlet itself than about the relations between the two right-wing politicians.

Yedioth Ahronoth, eager to portray the government coalition as unstable and full of internal strife, leads with the colorful headline “An explosion in the cabinet,” and, keeping with the imagery of heat and fire, adds that the relationship between Netanyahu and Bennett has reached a “boiling point.”

According to Channel 2, the furious confrontation erupted over the issue of ongoing Israeli security operations inside major Palestinian cities in the West Bank, in what is known as Area A. Yedioth analyst Sima Kadmon describes the row as “awkward” yet nevertheless likely calculated on part of the prime minister, especially in light of the fact that Netanyahu’s threat to ax Bennett was issued in front of several top-ranking army officials.

“Everyone in the room knew that for Netanyahu there is no such thing as a slip of the tongue,” Kadmon writes. “He was ready with the sentence that threatened Bennett with firing.” Kadmon confidently assesses that Netanyahu’s government would crumble if Bennett were fired and the Jewish Home party left the coalition as a result, and wonders aloud what the prime minister has up his sleeve if he is prepared to endure such consequences.

Curiously, Kadmon does not bring up recent reports according to which the Likud party and the opposition’s Zionist Union had been in advanced stages of talks to form a coalition government prior to the announcement of a corruption probe into Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog. While the status of the talks is not clear at this point, perhaps Netanyahu’s lashing out at Bennett signals the prime minister is willing — and able — to kick the Jewish Home out of his coalition in favor of the Zionist Union.

But then again, maybe Netanyahu has a different motivation for his attack on Bennett, as may be seen in Israel Hayom‘s downplaying of the heated argument between the prime minister and his fellow right-wing minister. The daily, considered somewhat of a mouthpiece of Netanyahu, dedicates only a small headline and less than a half a page article to the exchange while instead directing its dose of daily criticism at the Zionist Union. The paper first draws attention to Herzog’s controversial remarks about the need to assure his party does not come off as too “Arab loving,” and then by attacking up-and-coming Zionist Union’s Erel Margalit for his social media campaign urging the Israeli public to “take back the state” from the hands of right-wing extremists. The paper also attempts to highlight the growing divide within the Zionist Union by noting that Margalit stated the utterances of Herzog “were better off never having been said.”

Haaretz seems uninterested in the Bennett-Netanyahu debate and leads with the uncovering of a Jewish terrorist cell by Shin Bet security service investigators. According to Haaretz, seven suspected Jewish extremists — among them two minors and one IDF soldier — admitted to planning and carrying out a series of attacks against Palestinian civilians, including an assault on a 60-year-old man, several incidents of arson, and the hurling of a gas grenade into the home of a family in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Haaretz reports that the suspects reenacted several attacks, and that another IDF soldier, an officer and relative of several of the suspects, has been questioned over his alleged involvement in the said attacks. Shin Bet investigators believe the seven were “inspired” by the firebombing attack on a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Duma last July which killed three family members and left another child severely injured.

Yedioth adds that the suspected Jewish terror ring has been operating since 2009, when the youngest alleged member of the cell was only thirteen. “We are talking about a violent and extremist organization, which systematically hurt Palestinians and their belongings all the while knowing that their actions might harm human life,” an investigator tells Yedioth. “The suspects would drive hours in their car and come to the nearby Arab villages, in order to understand how to carry out the actions in a way they would not be tracked.”

Another big issue on the mind of Israel’s leading Hebrew-language papers is mega-tech giant Intel’s recent announcement of its plan to fire 12,000 employees worldwide, striking immediate concern among many Israelis who work for the company in its various branches throughout the country. According to Yedioth, the overall sentiment among Israel’s Intel employees is positive, with some of them stating they believe the company is actually more likely to increase future activity in the Jewish state. One interviewee points to the fact that Intel only just built a new technology center in Kiryat Gat, and a second adds, in a most Israeli fashion, that she is sure “everything will be alright.”