Senior Likud/Beitenu officials quoted by the daily Post Chadashot feel Yesh Atid leader MK Yair Lapid is doing his utmost to drag out coalition negotiations until the deadline in the hope of achieving a major deal or alternatively compel new elections. They feel Lapid is unwilling to exhibit any flexibility regarding his cabinet aspirations and his unrealistic wish list may lead to failure in the coalition building effort.
If Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is to succeed, to assemble a coalition before the Shabbos deadline 5 Nissan 5773, he will have to present the coalition agreements to Knesset before Shabbos. If Knesset approves the agreements, he may present them to President Shimon Peres on motzei Shabbos.
The Likud/Beitenu sources are quoted anonymously saying “every few hours negotiators from the parties, Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi present new demands. On Tuesday, a three-way battle began between Likud/Beitenu, Bayit Yehudi and Yesh Atid began over control over the Knesset Finance Committee. None of the participants was willing to exhibit flexibility, each claiming they must make good on their election promise to voters.
Regarding Lapid’s demands for control over the Ministry of Education, the prime minister has even gone as far as to offer a rotation, to split control halfway into the four-year term but Lapid is unwilling to accept a rotation, demanding total control during the four-year term of the coalition.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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6 Responses
Some polls suggest that Lapid will do much better in a new election. However Likud may be reinforced by voters who supported Bennett but will now believe that Likud is better at protecting settlements as well as yeshivos. Also if Yisrael Beiteinu runs separately, both they and Likud might do better, and to a certain extent, at the expense of Lapid since secular voters turned off the by “Likud Beinteinu” tended to support Lapid. Bayit Yehudi will be worse off, and that suggests they’ll break the alliance with Yesh Atid and together with the hareidi parties join Likud (meaning we’ll get some loss of benefits for yeshiva students, but not penal sanctions).
For what its worth, Arutz 7 is reporting a done deal: harav Piron will be the Minister of Education and Habayit Hayehudi (probably Uri Auerbach-Y.L.) will chair ‘veadat haksafim’.
Think LAPID will lose voters next time around. He has shown inexperience & novice dealings..
Lapid is not a team player. He’ll create even more problems after 5 Nissan. The other unstated reason why he didn’t want chareidim is that without the extra buffer of their seats, Lapid will be able to collapse the government at any time for his own purposes.
#2 Same story on Kikar Hashabbat. I don’t know what Bennett is thinking, why would he give up the chance for the Interior Ministry just to spite the hareidi tzibur? For that matter, why would he even be in an alliance with an anti-settlements, anti-Torah leftist like Lapid in the first place?
The whole thing is very difficult to understand.
“voters who supported Bennett but will now believe that Likud is better at protecting settlements as well as yeshivos”
Unlikely, as the charedim have made clear that they don’t care about settlements at all and Netanyahu is now on record publicly as supporting both the charedim and Tzipi Livni.