From the Liveblog of
Monday, March 24, 2025
Rebel Otzma Yehudit MK being pressured to take ministerial role to oust him as MK
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party is pressuring rebel MK Almog Cohen to accept a deputy ministerial position in order to get him out of the Knesset, according to Hebrew media reports.
Getting Cohen to accept such an appointment would allow him to resign his seat, allowing former Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot to rejoin the Knesset under the so-called Norwegian Law — which allows ministers and deputy ministers from large factions to resign from the Knesset, with their seats filled by members of their parties.
When Amichai Eliyahu resigned as heritage minister in January, his exit forced the resignation of Sukkot, who held a lower spot on the two parties’ joint electoral list in the 2022 legislative election.
Speaking with The Times of Israel last week, an Otzma Yehudit source said that following the party’s return to the government, neither Eliyahu nor Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who’s the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister, would be able to resign under the Norwegian Law. Eliyahu had already resigned once and is barred from doing so again and Wasserlauf represents a one-man faction within the party that would no longer have Knesset representation were he to do so.
The source says today that Cohen’s resignation would help the party sideline an MK who has consistently bucked party discipline and continued to vote with the coalition during the party’s time in the opposition.
In a WhatsApp message to The Times of Israel, Cohen says he was offered a position “unofficially” through intermediaries but would not accept even a full ministerial position.
“Jobs and positions are less interesting to me,” he says.
