Rivlin implores Netanyahu, Gantz not to let budget standoff lead to elections

President Reuven Rivlin has spoken in recent days with coalition party leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, with the goal of preventing another election, the President’s Residence said Thursday.

Netanyahu and Gantz have until Monday night, August 24, to either pass a state budget — practically impossible with the time left to do so — or pass a bill to delay the budget by 100 days, or else the government will dissolve, triggering the country’s fourth election since April 2019.

Netanyahu has been reported to be demanding various changes to his Likud party’s coalition agreement with Gantz’s Blue and White to protect his status as his criminal trial moves forward, as well as to assert more power over the justice and law enforcement systems. He is reportedly demanding greater power over senior appointments, including of top law enforcement officials, in contravention of previous agreements.

Gantz has also insisted on passing a budget for 2020-21, as the coalition deal between the parties stipulates, while Netanyahu is insisting on a budget that only covers the rest of 2020, citing the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

No compromise appeared to be on the horizon as several reported proposals by Likud and Blue and White faced immediate criticism.

Rivlin met Netanyahu and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party leader Yaakov Litzman, and spoke on the phone with Gantz, Shas leader Aryeh Deri and UTJ No. 2 Moshe Gafni, according to the statement.

He told the politicians that “it is unthinkable that the issue of approving the state budget will lead us to a fourth election.”

“Even though respecting agreements is important, if approving the budget is indeed the only obstacle on the way to preventing elections, all coalition heads must compromise in a way that enables its passage,” Rivlin said.

“The public’s trust in its elected officials will hit an extreme low in the case of another election,” the president added. “After three election cycles in less than a year, we, the citizens, feel deceived and fearful.”

“If we are doomed to go to another election, we must make sure that we go to it with full transparency, with the public understanding the exact reason. We mustn’t allow the budget to be the reason,” Rivlin said, apparently alluding to widespread suspicions that Netanyahu is interested in elections to avoid having to hand over the premiership to Gantz in November 2021.

A bill to postpone the budget deadline has been approved in its first of three plenum readings, but Likud is making various demands in order to support its final passage. Under the terms of the bill, the deadline would be put off by 100 days until December 3. As the bill requires changing the country’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws, it must pass with a majority of 61 out of the 120 lawmakers in the Knesset.

Since under the laws passed to form the coalition, failure to pass a 2021 budget by next March would force new elections, Blue and White has accused Netanyahu of deliberately attempting to violate the coalition agreement with his budget demand in order leave himself a future window to dissolve the government and avoid having to hand over the prime minister post to Gantz next year, as the coalition deal also stipulates.

Likud has offered to skip approval of the 2020 budget entirely, and start talks on the state budget for next year, the Kan public broadcaster reported Thursday.

However, the proposal would still leave Netanyahu’s party a possible window of opportunity to dissolve the government in March 2021 without Gantz becoming transitional prime minister, which would undermine the power-sharing deal.

That is why Blue and White opposes the proposal, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Army Radio reported Thursday morning that Blue and White were formulating their own offer, which would see senior law enforcement appointments frozen for an additional period, until a mechanism for those nominations is finalized.

More importantly, the plan would include the immediate appointment of a new interim state attorney instead of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who currently holds the temporary role.

Netanyahu, livid at Mandelblit for announcing corruption charges against him in three criminal cases, tried unsuccessfully to prevent him from becoming interim state attorney when Shai Nitzan’s tenure ended in December. Replacing Mandelblit as interim state attorney is one of the premier’s goals.

According to the reported Blue and White proposal, Mandelblit’s replacement will be announced soon, with the agreement of both parties, and will serve until a full-time state attorney is picked.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid-Telem party lambasted the reported Blue and White proposal.

“I refuse to believe this is true,” Lapid tweeted. “This is a blowout sale of the rule of law to a criminal defendant. I cannot believe Gantz and [Justice Minister Avi] Nissenkorn will lend a hand to that.

“If they agree to this, it’s not even politics anymore. They won’t be able to say they are decent people,” he said.

However, Blue and White’s Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen told Army Radio that she opposes the proposed deal. “We don’t have to compromise,” she said. “Maybe we’ll cancel Netanyahu’s trial in the name of unity? The line is drawn in the [coalition] deal we signed.”

Nissenkorn attacked Likud for its “obsessive” concern with the identity of the state attorney and “politicization” of law enforcement appointments.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is beating his head against a wall,” he told Army Radio.

Likud and Blue and White members continued, meanwhile, to badmouth each other in interviews.

“The issue isn’t a single-year budget anymore,” Blue and White’s Science Minister Izhar Shay told Army Radio. “If someone wants to drag us to elections, they will find any way to do that.”

Likud’s Public Security Minister Amir Ohana told the station: “I don’t expect this government to function more than reasonably well, but we don’t currently have that. There is no mutual trust.”

Gantz said Wednesday that his party was making every effort to solve the crisis, but said it would not compromise on its core tenets to do so.

An unnamed senior official in Likud lashed out on Wednesday at Blue and White over the ongoing coalition crisis, suggesting lawmakers were unlikely to stave off the collapse of the government.

“This business isn’t working. From the start I didn’t have high expectations, but I didn’t think it would be like this. It’s impossible to work,” the unnamed official said of the coalition, according to Hebrew-language media reports. “Will we go to elections on Monday? This government is not functioning. Continuing in the current situation is even worse than elections.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.