Yamina lashes Golan for boasting that Ra’am’s demands being considered

As if the coalition didn’t have enough infighting, the Yamina party is launching an attack on deputy minister Yair Golan, after he told Channel 12 news that the government was “proudly” considering demands made by the Ra’am party regarding the Temple Mount.

The Islamist Ra’am froze its participation in the coalition earlier this week and issued a list of demands to be met for it to rejoin, including returning the Temple Mount to a pre-2000 status quo in which, Ra’am said, police coordinated with the Jordanian-controlled Waqf administering the site on visits by non-Muslims.

“Yair, let me understand. Are you trying to dismantle the opposition?” tweets Nir Orbach, a Yamina MK who last week issued his own list of demands and threatened to dismantle the coalition.

In a statement, the party rejects the comments from Golan, a Meretz MK and former general who is one of the government’s most dovish members.

“The Temple Mount is under total Israeli sovereignty, and any decisions made will be done so in light of the security considerations of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, which enshrines freedom of religion for all,” it says.