Netanyahu walks out of his own cabinet meeting

Furious that ministers keep ducking out to make phone calls or grab snacks, PM cuts short session, resumes when colleagues return

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked out of his own cabinet meeting on Sunday, in a rage over his ministerial colleagues ducking out to take phone calls or grab snacks at the canteen.

He cut the meeting short, got up and walked out of the room, Army Radio reported. Only when the errant ministers had returned did Netanyahu come back in and resume the cabinet deliberations.

Sunday’s walk-out marked Netanyahu’s second public display of anger at his new government’s ministers in three weeks.

At the June 7 meeting, he fumed that several ministers hadn’t bothered to turn up at all, some of them even absenting themselves without giving him prior notice.

Netanyahu reportedly asked Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit to look into applying sanctions against Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Economy Minister Aryeh Deri and Interior Minister Silvan Shalom for not attending that meeting. A spokesman for Deri’s bureau later said that Deri did not attend because he felt ill.

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