Lapid backs Jewish Home in demands for security cabinet reform

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid on Friday backed the Jewish Home party’s demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overhaul the high-level security cabinet and improve intelligence-sharing among ministers.

The Jewish Home is threatening to torpedo a newly inked coalition deal between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Liberman unless the system is changed.

“Bennett is right,” the former finance minister said in a statement.

“As someone who has sat with him in the [security] cabinet, I can attest that the current situation is unreasonable. The [security] cabinet ministers do not receive information that is comprehensive enough,” and it operates “from crisis to crisis,” said Lapid.

When the State Comptroller report on Operation Protective Edge is released, the Israeli public “will not understand how you can wage a war like this,” Lapid said. Earlier this month, leaked segments of the report revealed that key intelligence was withheld from members of the security cabinet during the 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza, prompting Bennett to demand Netanyahu correct the “deficiencies” of intelligence-sharing with his cabinet.

Lapid also praised the Jewish Home leader for making a policy demand rather than jockeying for more senior ministries in the cabinet reshuffle.

“But in this government, the person who presents a cynical list of demands and honors becomes the man with whom everyone wants to work,” he said, referring to Liberman, who is slated to become defense minister. “By contrast, the person who did not ask anything for himself but is merely trying to improve the work of the political leadership is accused of opportunism and is threatened to be fired,” Lapid maintained.

Netanyahu and Liberman on Wednesday formalized the coalition deal that will bring Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party into the coalition.

Bennett is demanding Netanyahu appoint a military attaché to the cabinet, to provide ministers with real-time security updates, increase fact-finding visits to IDF bases and other military zones, and facilitate easier access to classified information.

If the demand is not met, Bennett has threatened his Jewish Home party will vote against Liberman’s appointment during a Knesset vote slated for early next week, which will sink the coalition deal. The coalition will require Jewish Home’s eight votes to pass the appointment.

“The prime minister’s continued insistence on restricting the members of the security cabinet is puzzling,” a Jewish Home statement said on Wednesday.

“We did not demand jobs, nor did we demand control of budgets. We demanded to save lives,” the party charged, referring to the various ministerial demands and other negotiations that are accompanying the coalition shake-up. “This requirement is written in blood, and we will not back down from it.”

Bennett, himself a member of the security cabinet, told Army Radio Monday that during the 2014 war, ministers were not given enough information “to know what was going on and were thus unable to make clear and rational decisions.

“One cannot expect members of the cabinet to bear responsibility for the security of Israel without giving them the necessary tools. Therefore, this is a condition of the entire Jewish Home faction for approving the latest changes in the makeup of the government and cabinet,” he said.

Likud officials, however, have rejected Bennett’s demand, saying they won’t be opening existing coalition agreements for new discussion. Officials from both parties have said there are currently no talks taking place to try to prevent a standoff.

Immigration Absorption Minister Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) called Bennett’s demand a “very strange saga.

“Members of the Jewish Home approached me, saying, ‘Let’s bring this to Liberman, it’s very, very important,'” he said Wednesday. “I don’t remember a single time when the inner workings of the cabinet were considerations in coalition negotiations and in the media.”

Likud officials have also said that the National Security Council exists precisely to provide ministers with the relevant information.

Bennett has maintained that similar complaints regarding the security cabinet were raised by the government-appointed Winograd Commission into the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and protested that “10 years later, nothing has been fixed.” Specifically, he demanded that a military attaché be appointed to coordinate the provision of the necessary information.

Liberman’s presumptive move into the Defense Ministry shook the Israeli political arena when it was announced last week, as the then-incumbent defense minister Moshe Ya’alon from the Likud party was effectively ousted from his post.

Ya’alon promptly resigned from politics, citing a “lack of trust” in the prime minister.