Cabinet meeting scrapped for 2nd week in a row, this time due to Kushner visit
Ministers told government won’t convene on Sunday because of ‘diplomatic meetings’; report says Chadian president may also visit Israel next week
The upcoming cabinet meeting will be scrapped for a second straight week, ministers were informed Thursday, due to the arrival of a US delegation led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.
A message sent to ministers by the cabinet secretariat cited “diplomatic meetings” that will be held on Sunday.
The cabinet also didn’t convene for its weekly cabinet meeting this Sunday amid a coalition crisis between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White.
The disagreement between the sides nearly led to new elections, but Likud and Blue and White reached a compromise to delay Monday night’s deadline to pass a state budget by 120 days. The agreement removed the immediate threat of new elections, but the parties remain deeply at odds on several issues and many analysts believe the government is still on life support and will not survive beyond the next deadline.
Coalition infighting also led to the cancellation of a cabinet meeting earlier this month because of a failure to agree on the meeting’s agenda.
Kushner is set to land in Israel over the weekend and will be accompanied by US President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and peace envoy Avi Berkowitz, among other officials.
The visit will come after the recent US-brokered agreement for Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalize diplomatic ties. Kushner will also travel to several Arab states as the Trump administration pushes other countries to normalize ties with Israel, and is set to fly from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi on the first commercial flight between the two countries. An Israeli delegation led by National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat will also be on the flight.
That flight is expected to be operated by Israel’s national airline El Al, which will bring three furloughed senior pilots back to work for that purpose, according to Hebrew-language media reports Thursday.
It will be the company’s first commercial flight in months, after it shut down most of its operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Foreign Ministry is conducting talks with Saudi Arabia about the flight potentially passing over Saudi airspace, but the matter isn’t final, a source with knowledge of the talks told The Times of Israel.
According to the Ynet news site, Chadian President Idriss Déby is also expected to visit Israel sometime next week.
The unsourced report didn’t say what the purpose of Déby’s trip was.
Netanyahu met with Déby last year on a visit to the Chadian capital of N’Djamena, during which the two countries agreed to renew ties, which Chad severed in 1972 due to pressure from Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
