Likud scuttlebutt kicks into overdrive as Netanyahu divies ministries

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held meetings with Likud lawmakers to inform each of the posts they would hold in the 20th Knesset.

As the meetings stretched into the late evening on Wednesday, the Likud rumor mill worked at a fever pitch.

Netanyahu has until Thursday at 7 p.m. to satisfy as many lawmakers as he can with a relatively small number of posts before the coalition is set to be sworn in at an official Knesset ceremony.

The prime minister may have the hardest time pleasing Gilad Erdan, no. 2 on the party list after Netanyahu himself.

Erdan has battled for a senior government post, but Netanyahu has urged him to take a reduced Interior Ministry, one that saw its planning department handed over to the Finance Ministry in the coalition deal with Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party.

Erdan balked at the offer, a significant bump down in the Israeli political hierarchy from his ambition of holding the Foreign Ministry post.

Netanyahu has refused to assign a foreign minister in the new government, holding on to the post as a standing enticement for the return of Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman into the coalition or, even better in terms of coalition math, the Isaac Herzog-led Labor Party/Zionist Union.

According to Channel 2, Erdan has proposed uniting the interior and internal security ministries into a French-style office that sees domestic planning and public security as two sides of the same coin.

Netanyahu has reportedly declined to lose two posts to one candidate when he is already dealing with 17 lawmakers competing for just 12 posts.

Erdan and Netanyahu met at approximately 9:30 p.m. Wednesday but adjourned without reaching an agreement. Another meeting was called for later in the night.

If the two leaders fail to reach an agreement, sources close to Erdan have suggested he may choose to sit out the new government.

The rest of the scuttlebutt from Likud watercooler conversation:

It is all but certain that Moshe Ya’alon will retain the Defense Ministry.

Yisrael Katz, too, is expected to remain in the Transportation Ministry.

The new appointments are likely to include Ze’ev Elkin as absorption minister, Yariv Levin as tourism minister, Miri Regev in the Culture and Sports Ministry, and Ofir Akunis at communications.

Silvan Shalom, the Likud stalwart and past candidate for party leader, has not yet found his place in the new government, say insiders.