Likud deputy minister says Liberman not fit for the job

A Likud deputy minister joined opposition lawmakers Saturday in panning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment of Avigdor Liberman to the post of defense minister.

“Liberman will not be a good defense minister,” Deputy Minister for Regional Affairs Ayoub Kara said at a cultural event in Beersheba. “Someone with military experience should have been appointed, someone who understands what a weapon is.”

Besides his hawkish views, Liberman’s appointment to the defense ministry has been criticized for his lack of military experience — he had a short military career as a stockkeeper in the Artillery Corps and never participated in combat. His predecessor Moshe Ya’alon served as IDF chief of staff and had led the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit.

Opposition lawmakers Saturday hailed the recent resignations of Ya’alon from the Defense Ministry and Avi Gabbay (Kulanu) from the Environmental Protection Ministry as the only appropriate response to Liberman’s appointment.

MK Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid) said Netanyahu’s government was quickly losing its most impressive members “due to the prime minister’s reckless conduct” and the lack of confidence in his leadership.

“In one week two of the government’s most decent and professional ministers have resigned,” he said at a Neve Monson event. “Ya’alon and Gabbay understood that there is a dividing line today in Israeli politics between those who are decent and those who are not.”

He called the ministers’ departure “a clear vote of no-confidence” in the government.

Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union criticized Kulanu party leader and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon for allowing Liberman’s nomination to go through.

“If Kahlon thinks Israeli citizens care only if their children have an apartment, he’s wrong,” she said, referencing Kahlon’s socioeconomic platform which was central to his party’s success during the 2015 elections.

“They also care about what kind of country their children grow up in, what kind of army they serve in and what its values are.”

MK Itzik Shmuli (Zionist Union) said there was “a stench rising from this government that not even the environmental protection minister could clean up.” He too added that he was disappointed “that Kahlon chose silence instead of backing his minister, and prefers staying in the government.”

Meretz leader Zehava Galon also said the resignations were proof of the government’s growing incompetence.

“Avi Gabbay who quit is not a Meretz supporter,” she noted. “Ya’alon isn’t a voter of ours either and neither is Orly Levy-Abekasis (who quit Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party last week saying she could not abide by her party’s failure to put social issues at the top of its agenda). But within one week all three decided that there are pills too tough to swallow, and that sometimes one must stand up and say ‘enough!'”

On Friday a TV report said senior members of the governing coalition believe the government may soon collapse, triggering elections within the next six months.

The Channel 10 report quoted unnamed political “party leaders” as saying that Netanyahu’s bid to expand his multi-party coalition by bringing in Liberman “is likely to turn into a move that will destroy the coalition.”

The TV report came hours after Gabbay resigned from the government, warning that the increasingly “extremist” coalition was leading Israel along a path to destruction. Gabbay’s resignation, in turn, followed a week after Ya’alon resigned, furious that he was being ousted in favor of Liberman. Ya’alon also warned of dangerous extremism taking hold in the Israeli leadership.

Underlining the chaos now afflicting the Netanyahu coalition, which only took office after elections in March 2015, another coalition player, the nationalist Jewish Home party, is vowing not to approve the inclusion of Liberman and his Yisrael Beytenu party when it comes up for a scheduled vote in the Knesset next week. Jewish Home’s leader, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, is demanding an overhaul in the way the key security cabinet is given critical information in times of war and conflict, and his party on Friday flatly rejected a Netanyahu proposal to set up a committee to deal with the issue. Relations between Netanyahu’s Likud and Bennett’s Jewish Home are now “in real crisis,” the Channel 10 report said.

Meanwhile the resignation of Gabbay, a founding member of Kulanu, has thrown that party into a mini-crisis.

Kahlon was reported by Channel 10 on Friday to now be making renewed efforts to persuade the center-left opposition leader Isaac Herzog to join the coalition, and thus to give the government a less hawkish hue. But Herzog, who had been negotiating a partnership with Netanyahu until the prime minister opted to bring in Liberman, has insisted repeatedly in recent days that he will not resume talks with the prime minister.

Herzog has claimed that he was prepared to risk his political career to partner with Netanyahu because there was a rare opportunity for regional progress toward peace. But, he said earlier in the week, Netanyahu “ran away” from that opportunity, and opted instead to turn to the hardline Liberman.

Netanyahu insisted on Wednesday that he hopes to take advantage of the possibilities for progress on the Palestinian and regional front, and Liberman said much the same.

Strikingly, an opinion poll published by Israel Radio on Friday showed that a new center-right grouping including the ousted Ya’alon, Kahlon’s Kulanu, and popular former Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar, would become Israel’s biggest party if elections were held today.

Channel 10 said that Ya’alon, who resigned from the Knesset on Sunday but said he would return to politics after a time out, “has already begun preparing the organizational infrastructure” for a possible comeback.