Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night the eve of 24 Nissan met with Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon for three hours in an effort to reach agreement towards signing a coalition agreement with the party. According to the Yisrael Hayom newspaper, the stalemate surrounds Kahlon’s demands to receive control of the Finance Ministry as well as the Interior Ministry Planning & Building Committee along with the Israel Lands Administration. Kahlon explains that he promised voters to implement sweeping change if he assumes a cabinet post and these changes he explains demands that his party control the agencies mentioned. Kahlon insists that as finance minister, without control over the other related state agencies, he will lack the control to eliminate the nationwide housing shortage and other problems that he promises to tackle.
It is indicated the prime minister will announce his decision regarding cabinet appointments by week’s end. Mr. Netanyahu is also expected to meet with the chareidi party representatives later in the week in the hope of closing a deal with them. This however may be complicated as a result of the lack of progress with Kahlon, whose party earned 10 seats in elections.
The dati leumi Srugim website reports that Mr. Netanyahu will be meeting with party leaders personally towards week’s end, aware he must become personally involved to advance the coalition-building process.
Regarding Yahadut Hatorah, demands include control of the Knesset Finance committee, to be given to Moshe Gafne, and Yaakov Litzman will become deputy minister of health with ministerial authority. Shas is demanding the Interior and Religious Services ministries, with the Bayit Yehudi party insisting it continue to control the latter.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
Netanyahu may be following a policy of letting the small parties “stew in their own juices” before he starts “playing hardball.”
The hareidim are especially vulnerable, since unless the new coalition does something, criminal sanctions for draft resistance go into effect. Bibi can tell them to accept what’s offered, or face having your yeshivos closed. Also, if Bibi wants to dump the hareidim, he can recruit Yesh Atid to replace them.
And Bibi can always offer to invite Labor into the government, offering them less patronage than had been demanded by the small parties.
Netanyahu “holds all the cards”, so its hardly a stalemate.
Oy.. Deri is being Deri
דרכיה דרכי נועם
A good Gov’t needs to be more than the sum of it’s parts
It ought to cause a soaring of imagination
A collective past of sorrow shared and a common purpose and hope
More also than a prosiac motley of statisticians,technocrats and bureaucrats
#4- That’s the reason the US, France and Russia all prefer a strong president rather than the “government by committee” that usually results in a parliamentary system. One should note that in Israeli, such a goverment might be very antagonistic to Yiddishkeit, and wouldn’t be restrained by the need to keep a stable of coalition partners happy. The disadvantage of a decisive government with a soaring imagination is when they go off in a wrong direction, nothing holds them back (consider Germany in the 1930s).