Labor faction members on Monday decided to support the position of party leader Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the party will vote in favor of Likud MK Silvan Shalom’s bill to dissolve the current coalition. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday.

15 of the faction members supported the move, but there is internal party opposition. Minister Raleb Majadele opposed the vote, MK Nadia Hilo abstained, and Minister Yuli Tamir and MKs Yoram Marciano and Amir Peretz absented themselves from the vote. MK Shelly Yacimovitz expressed adamant opposition to the move, stating Olmert has nothing to lose but others are not in the same boat as the prime minister. She added to vote to bring down the coalition his “hallucinatory and destructive”. Peretz supports elections in May 2009, and Tamir feels only the party’s Central Committee governing body has the authority to order such a move.

Barak has imposed ‘party discipline’, complicating matters for the opponents to his decision, now compelled to vote in accordance to the party line. Tamir, Peretz and Marciano are appealing the decision to the party’s leadership body in the hope of changing realities before Wednesday’s scheduled Knesset vote.

Barak did however leave Olmert and Kadima an emergency exit to avoid the vote, stating if Kadima sets a date in the near future for elections, the vote will not be necessary.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)