Ratcheting up threat to bolt, Jewish Home votes to back coalition ultimatum

Jewish Home MKs on Wednesday night voted unanimously in favor of leaving the coalition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not make their party leader Naftali Bennett defense minister, after Avigdor Liberman announced his resignation from the post earlier in the day.

The lawmakers from the religious-Zionist party also voted to give Bennett full authority to carry out negotiations directly with the prime minister based on that ultimatum.

“The Jewish Home must be given the defense portfolio in order to impact and exact a significant change in Israel’s deterrence,” a senior party source told The Times of Israel.

“Without such a change there would be no point in continuing the current government,” the said, adding that “a right-wing government without a deterrent is not a right-wing government.”

A party spokesman declined to say how long the party would give Netanyahu to make Bennett defense minister before they would pull out of the coalition and bring the government down.

The demand came minutes after Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman announced that he would be resigning as defense minister, calling for the government to be dismantled and new elections to be held.

“It’s either the Defense Ministry or we are out,” party officials said immediately after Liberman’s announcement. “This is our ultimatum to stay in the government.”

The departure of Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu leaves the coalition with a narrow margin of just 61 seats against the opposition’s 59, greatly raising the possibility of early elections before they are officially scheduled in November 2019.

Jewish Home, which has eight lawmakers and could easily fell the government if it bolts.

Liberman said his decision came in light of ceasefire understandings agreed on Tuesday between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza following an unprecedentedly intense two-day rocket barrage on Israel’s south.

A day earlier, Liberman, Bennett and other ministers severely criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the decision.

“What happened yesterday, the ceasefire, together with the deal with Hamas, is a capitulation to terror. There is no other way of explaining it,” Liberman told reporters Wednesday.

He concluded his prepared statement by calling for elections to be held “at the soonest possible date.” During a subsequent question-and-answer session he predicted that right-wing voters would “see through the other parties’ hypocrisy” and reward his Yisrael Beytenu party with 20 Knesset seats.

A Likud source said in response that there “no need to go to elections at this time of sensitive security,” despite the coalition losing five seats with Yisrael Beytenu’s expected exit. The source said that Netanyahu would serve as acting defense minister, despite already serving at the helm of the Foreign and Health ministries in addition to the duties of the premiership.

But fueling speculation that new elections may be called, Likud officials presented ultra-Orthodox coalition partners with several possible dates for the new Knesset elections, the Walla news site reported.

According to the report, Netanyahu spoke about new elections with Moshe Gafni, leader of the Degel Hatorah faction in the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party.

Ultra-Orthodox coalition parties are hoping to pass a law on ultra-Orthodox draft to the IDF before the current Knesset is dissolved. A new law must be passed by December 2 by court order, or a previous arrangement by which yeshiva students were able to receive military draft deferments will expire.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.