Jewish Home warns it will sink coalition deal over cabinet reform

The right-wing Jewish Home party said Wednesday it was standing firm in its demand to overhaul the high-level security cabinet, threatening to torpedo a newly inked coalition deal between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Avigdor Liberman.

Netanyahu and Liberman on Wednesday formalized the coalition deal that will bring Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party into the coalition and make him the defense minister.

Bennett is demanding Netanyahu appoint the cabinet a military attaché to provide ministers with real-time security updates, increase fact-finding visits to IDF bases and other military zones, and facilitate easier access to classified information.

If the demand is not met, Bennett has threatened his Jewish Home party will vote against Liberman’s appointment during a Knesset vote slated for early next week, which will sink the coalition deal. The coalition will require Jewish Home’s eight votes to pass the appointment.

“The prime minister’s continued insistence on restricting the members of the security cabinet is puzzling,” a Jewish Home statement said on Wednesday.

“We did not demand jobs, nor did we demand control of budgets. We demanded to save lives,” the party charged, referring to the various ministerial demands and other negotiations that are accompanying the coalition shakeup. “This requirement is written in blood, and we will not back down from it.”

Earlier this month, after a leaked state comptroller report revealed that key intelligence was withheld from members of security cabinet during the 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza, Bennett demanded Netanyahu correct the “deficiencies” of intelligence-sharing with his cabinet.

Bennett, himself a member of the security cabinet, told Army Radio Monday that during the war, ministers were not given enough information “to know what was going on” and were thus unable to make decisions properly.

“One cannot expect members of the cabinet to bear responsibility for the security of Israel without giving them the necessary tools. Therefore, this is a condition of the entire Jewish Home faction for approving the latest changes in the makeup of the government and cabinet,” he said.

Likud officials, however, have rejected Bennett’s demand, saying they won’t be opening existing coalition agreements for new discussion. Officials from both parties have said there are currently no talks taking place to try to prevent a standoff.

Immigration Absorption Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) called Bennett’s demand a “very strange saga.”

“Members of the Jewish Home approached me, saying, ‘Let’s bring this to Liberman, it’s very, very important,'” he said Wednesday. “I don’t remember a single time when the inner workings of the cabinet were considerations in coalition negotiations and in the media.”

Bennett has maintained that similar complaints regarding the security cabinet were raised by the government-appointed Winograd Commission into the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and protested that “10 years later, nothing has been fixed.” Specifically, he demanded that a military attaché be appointed to coordinate the provision of the necessary information.

Liberman’s presumptive move into the Defense Ministry shook the Israeli political arena when it was announced last week, as the then-incumbent defense minister Moshe Ya’alon from the Likud party was effectively ousted from his post.

Ya’alon promptly resigned from politics, citing a “lack of trust” in the prime minister.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.