Coalition talks snag over immigrant pensions

Coalition talks between the Yisrael Beytenu and Likud parties were in crisis on Monday afternoon, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

In the morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an urgent meeting with Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon of Kulanu, and Likud’s top coalition negotiator, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin.

According to a source close to Kahlon, the talks are stalled over Liberman’s demand for billions of shekels in state funds to shore up the pensions of tens of thousands of former Soviet Union immigrants.

The issue is critical for Yisrael Beytenu, for which elderly Russian-speaking Israelis are a core constituency. Most of the approximately 78,000 elderly immigrant poor in the country hail from the FSU, in part because many of those immigrants arrived in Israel without pensions and were too old to save up for new pensions in Israel.

In a statement Monday morning, Yisrael Beytenu said, “Our conditions for entering the coalition were known in advance.” The party would make an “honest effort” to resolve the dispute, “but we can’t move forward if the will isn’t there on the other side too.”

But Finance Ministry officials have balked at Yisrael Beytenu’s demand, noting the high price tag — some NIS 2.5 billion ($645 million), according to estimates — and the legal and ethical problems that arise when welfare benefits are applied based on place of birth.

“The finance minister is unwilling to accept Yisrael Beytenu’s demand that the benefits apply only to new immigrants, and we haven’t found a solution to this problem,” a Finance Ministry official was quoted by the Walla news site as saying.

Kahlon reportedly told Netanyahu that his 10-seat party would not remain in the coalition if the measure was forced through as is — a move that could topple the government.

Any attempt to expand the proposed benefits to the broader population of elderly poor could cost more than five times as much, say officials.

Opposition lawmakers threatened on Monday to work to torpedo the passage of any immigrants-only (or FSU-immigrants-only) pension benefit.

Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuli, who chairs the Knesset Pensioners Caucus, said that if the final agreement offers benefits only to immigrants from the former Soviet Union, “we will challenge this discriminatory deal in court.”

Shmulik Mizrahi, head of the Pensioners Union, sent a letter Monday to Netanyahu demanding that any benefits agreed to in the negotiations be applied equally to all pensioners based on economic need, not geographic or cultural origins, Walla reported.

MK Tali Ploskov, a former Yisrael Beytenu mayor of Arad who now serves in the Knesset on the Kulanu list, also criticized her former party’s demand, saying that a pension reform plan is already under development in the Finance Ministry that would push all the elderly poor above the poverty line. The reform was a campaign promise of Kulanu.

The Netanyahu-Kahlon-Liberman-Levin meeting ended shortly after noon on Monday — without agreement, sources said.

If the talks fall through, Netanyahu will find himself with the same narrow 61-seat coalition he had before starting coalition talks with Zionist Union several weeks ago. Those fell apart last week after Liberman provisionally agreed to join the coalition, where he is set to take on the role of defense minister.