Foreign Ministry facing ‘annihilation,’ lawmakers told

A Foreign Ministry representative told lawmakers on Monday that the ministry is being “annihilated” by the current government.

In a tense, and at times loud, meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for human resources, Amir Alon, charged that “someone decided to annihilate us. Iran has 67 more embassies around the world than us. This is a ridiculous situation.”

In the world’s 180 countries, Israel only operates 100 full-time embassies, over half of which are understaffed, ministry representatives said.

The ministry has protested for months the de facto outsourcing of many of its responsibilities to other ministries. Interior Minister Silvan Shalom is in charge of the peace talks with the Palestinians in the new government, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of battling boycotts of Israel, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz of the cabinet’s Iran policy making, and more.

The ministry does not now have its own minister, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept the post for himself on a part-time basis and appointed his confidant Dore Gold as its new director.

Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, a political competitor to Netanyahu, argued that the developments were dangerous.

“If we fail at this, it’s a blow to national security,” he said in an interview with Army Radio Monday. “If the Foreign Ministry [must] tell key people [abroad] that they’re not part of a policy, why do we need the Foreign Ministry? Netanyahu has done everything to undermine the ministry.”