Political sloggerheads

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition crisis, which kept the newspapers going these past few weeks, has all but fallen off the front page and from public attention, but the news in Monday’s papers is that the premier met with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon in an effort to patch things up. The result? Well, depends on whom you ask.

The newsworthiness is the fact that the two sat down for the first time since the outbreak of this coalition crisis, but that’s not all that surprising considering Netanyahu was away in China for a large chunk of the time.

On the one hand, the front page headline in Israel Hayom conveys hope that a resolution is in the cards: “Public broadcaster crisis: Reaching understandings.” Turn the page to the article itself, however, and it becomes clearer that while the two met twice, they’re still not out of the woods. The substance of the free daily newspaper’s reporting is meager. It reports that various government members met with one another and the bottom line is that Netanyahu and Kahlon are at loggerheads.

Israel Hayom’s columnist Mati Tuchfeld, who also wrote the reporting on this story, says in his analysis that the thing preventing success in negotiations between the two leaders is “Netanyahu’s great suspicion of Kahlon.”

“The finance minister didn’t manage to convince the prime minister that his opposition to closing the broadcaster last year was motivated only by economic considerations,” he says. “Netanyahu is convinced that somebody is whispering in Kahlon’s ear and causing him to be stubborn about the issue that in almost every respect there’s nothing to be stubborn about.”

A senior official in Netanyahu’s Likud party tells Haaretz that the option to dissolve the Knesset and go to elections remains on the table. But “the prime minister is not interested in elections, and is considering various options to solving the crisis Kahlon created,” the official says.

Another also unnamed Likud party source informs the paper that “as far as Netanyahu is concerned, he’ll come out the victor from this conflict no matter what situation: if he bends Kahlon — he gets a weakened public broadcaster, or even some kind of overhaul or another of the broadcasting corporation. If he doesn’t manage to bend the finance minister — Netanyahu will force elections before the attorney general announces the submission of indictments against him.”

Yedioth Ahronoth runs an article along the same lines as the rest, accompanied by an unflattering photo of Netanyahu looking like he’s about to vomit. It reports that the push toward compromise is being orchestrated by the ultra-Orthodox parties, who fear being out in the cold in a future governing coalition should the country be forced to go to elections. “We don’t see the need to advance elections. And more, over the public broadcaster?” it quotes nobody in particular, citing Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman and MK Moshe Gafni saying simultaneously. “We aren’t going to any elections.”

Haaretz runs a glowing column in support of Kahlon, in which Raviv Drucker reflects on how nice a guy he is. His bottom line is that Netanyahu’s gun is empty, his threats to go to elections are baseless. “In other words, all that Kahlon needs to do is burn a little time.”

But outside the political drama of the coalition crisis that nobody cares about, there are plenty of other interesting stories swirling around the front pages of the Hebrew newspapers.

In Yedioth Ahronoth, the paper’s military affairs writer raises the possibility of Hamas launching a war against Israel this summer, just before Israel completes its massive anti-tunnel border barrier that would hamper the group’s ability to use its subterranean infrastructure. “One could assume with caution that Hamas won’t put up with the massive construction and will try to scuttle it at the beginning in order to prevent its construction — even at the price of launching another war against Israel.”

For Haaretz, the matter of greatest concern is that a Knesset committee just approved a motion to allow government ministers to appoint dozens of their political cronies to cushy state jobs — including deputy CEO positions — without a tender or vetting process. The newspaper says that if the government approves the measure next week, it would cost the state millions of shekels per year.

All three papers run summaries of a French report according to which the Mossad attempted to bring in French double agents and penetrate the country’s spy agency. The incident itself took place several years ago, and the details concerning the case are murky, but the newspapers nonetheless give it a go.