PM calls, then cancels, urgent meeting as coalition bickers
A day after Livni scuttles vote on key ‘Jewish state’ bill, Yisrael Beytenu does the same to Yesh Atid tax-free homes proposal
With coalition partners publicly sniping and threatening retaliation after Justice Minister Tzipi Livni tried to torpedo a key bill, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called and then canceled an emergency Likud meeting Monday for consultations ahead of possible early elections, according to Hebrew media reports.
Transportion Minister Israel Katz, Interior Minister Gilad Erdan, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz and coalition chairman MK Ze’ev Elkin were scheduled to attend the meeting before it was called off, according to Israel daily Haaretz.
While one anonymous participant played down the importance of the meeting, saying it was purely informational, a source close to Netanyahu said it had been called in the wake of reports that Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the Yesh Atid party head, had been trying to form an alternative coalition with Haredi lawmakers.
Lapid has been trying to push through a controversial tax-free home purchase bill, which his party defines as a make-or-break move for their continued participation in the coalition. That effort took a hit when Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman pushed off a committee vote Monday, opening another fissure in the ruling coalition.
A coalition source told Haaretz that “Netanyahu wants elections. This is clear.”
Earlier in the day, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the hawkish Jewish Home party, warned that if a bill to define Israel by law as a Jewish state did not pass, “there will be no coalition.”
“When we formed the government, we agreed that we would pass the ‘Jewish state’ law,” he added.
Liberman held up Lapid’s flagship “Zero VAT” bill, which would allow first-time home-buyers a pass on taxes, in the Knesset Finance Committee and has said that his party will not vote in favor of it. The committee was supposed to vote on the bill Monday.
Bennett and Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu were apparently retaliating against their more dovish coalition partner after Livni, with the support of Yesh Atid, used her powers as chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation to scuttle a vote Sunday on the “Jewish State” bill, preventing it from being sent to the Knesset for a vote.
Netanyahu then said that the bill would not be presented to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation for a second time as Livni wished, and would instead be debated next week by the full government cabinet, which has the authority to forward legislation to the Knesset plenum for vote.
However, the prime minister’s response did not satisfy Bennett, who accused Yesh Atid and Livni’s Hatnua party of breaking coalition agreements and said that Jewish Home would no longer support bills from those two parties, his coalition partners.
The proposal currently on the table is one of several different bills seeking to define Israel as a Jewish state that have been circling in the Knesset in recent years, none of which have made much progress in the plenum, and is considered to present the most extreme version of such a law.
The bill seeks to anchor in law Israel’s definition as a Jewish state in the country’s Basic Laws. The version that was to be discussed by ministers Sunday, before the justice minister postponed it, also reportedly defines Israel’s democracy as subservient to its Jewish character and demotes Arabic from its status as an official language.
Despite offering public support for the bill, Netanyahu has qualified that the bill would likely go through many changes before it was passed as a law.
The rift between Netanyahu and Livni highlighted the mounting strains which have been increasingly weighing down on the current coalition. Netanyahu is under growing pressure from the center-left members of his coalition, who have voiced criticism over his handling of the collapsed peace process with the Palestinians as well as his role in calming tensions with Arab Israeli citizens.
In another sign the coalition is on the verge of collapsing, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers claimed Sunday to have been approached by politicians and businessmen, who urged the Haredi parties to join in forming an alternative government headed by Lapid and Labor party leader Isaac Herzog, currently the head of the opposition.
Last week, a Yesh Atid minister said his party would have to reconsider its position in the government hours after Hatnua’s Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz resigned and slammed Netanyahu over the budget. Earlier, Labor opposition chief Isaac Herzog urged the whole Hatnua party to quit the coalition.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu is also being pressured from the right, notably by the 12-member Jewish Home party.
Two weeks ago, amid riots in East Jerusalem neighborhoods and after a series of terror attacks in the capital, Bennett sniped that the government had “no right to exist” if it could not ensure security in its capital.
“A government that does not know how to regain deterrence and sovereignty and provide security for its citizens in their capital does not have a right to exist,” he said.
