PM’s move to expand cabinet narrowly passes first Knesset hurdle

The Knesset on Monday evening passed by a slim margin the first reading of a bill that would allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appoint more than 18 ministers to his cabinet.

All 120 MKs were present in the Knesset plenum during the vote, which was approved with 61 in favor and 59 against. The opposition, which had earlier promised to stage filibusters to block the vote, held out for five hours of fierce debate before Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, a Likud member, insisted the vote be held.

The Knesset members were called upon to vote on a proposal to freeze implementation of an earlier amendment to a constitutional law that capped the number of government ministers at 18. The amendment to Basic Law: Government was approved in the last government — effectively limiting the cabinet to 19 members, including the prime minister, plus four deputy ministers, and outlawing the institution of ministers without portfolio — and was touted at the time as a major reform.

Netanyahu has said he seeks to increase the cabinet by two ministers and four deputy ministers. Delaying implementation of the 18-minister limit would enable the prime minister to hand out additional portfolios to satisfy the demands of his own party members who missed out on cabinet positions that were given to coalition partners.

Following the vote, the bill was to be passed on to the Knesset Arrangements Committee, which will assign it to another committee where it will be prepared for a second and third reading.

Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid slammed the proposed cabinet expansion in remarks he made in the Knesset debate before the vote. During his term in the cabinet in the previous government, Lapid had helped push into law the restriction on the number of ministers.

“A year ago I sat at the government table, opposite the prime minister, and we voted on the law to reduce the government. And the prime minister raised his hand in the air,” Lapid recalled. “Afterwards, we came down here to the plenum and voted once, twice, three times [to approve it].”

With the Knesset poised to effectively reverse that legislation, Lapid lamented that “the public says to itself that laws are just a game and no one needs take seriously any law that is passed.”

The Likud party accused the opposition of “hypocrisy” in a statement released shortly after the vote, and defended the financial costs the expansion of the cabinet would incur.

“The incoming cabinet will be smaller than the outgoing one, which had 22 ministers. The expansion of the cabinet will save public funds since it will improve the government’s stability,” the party said. The costs “are negligible compared to the billions wasted when the government goes to elections every two years,” continued the statement.

The Likud said Netanyahu would begin negotiations with party members for the ministerships as soon as the bill passes the second and third readings.

The bill — upping the number of ministers — was green-lighted on Sunday by the outgoing 33rd government, which remains in office until the swearing-in of the new cabinet, originally slated for Wednesday but which will likely be pushed off to Thursday or next Monday.

Edelstein on Monday night announced that Netanyahu had told him on Wednesday that he had formed a coalition, a formality that has been glaringly absent since the prime minister’s deadline, sparking some speculation in Hebrew media reports.

AFP, Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.