(Photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Tensions in the coalition: Senior officials in the Likud party are outraged by the statements of members of the Knesset from Otzma Yehudit and claim that they are helping the protest – this is what political commentator Mati Tuchfeld reports today (Friday) in his column in Israel Hayom.
According to Tuchfeld, “Most of the members of the new coalition have internalized the idea: in view of the cries of the opposition and the massive campaign against the government involved in the media, what is needed is mostly to be silent. To answer factually, to let them run amok, to quickly advance the reforms in the judicial system and to demonstrate governance.”
But those who did not understand this, are Almog Cohen and Zvika Vogel, members of the Knesset of the Otzma Yehudit party who called this week to arrest the leaders of the opposition for incitement and treason.
Tuchfeld writes that “Likud ministers, led by the Prime Minister, were furious with the two members of the Knesset of Otzma Yehudit and hurled harsh words at them, to their faces and not to their faces. They accused them of harming the entire government, intensifying the opposition’s struggle and the demonstrations in the streets, and moreover – harming Israel in the international arena “.
A Likud minister was quoted as saying: “If there are 80,000 protesters on Shabbat night, it would be possible to say with certainty that several tens of thousands of them came because of Vogel and Cohen.”
A senior member of the party said: “The prime minister – who is working to restore the status of his new government in the world due to the lashing out at it by the opposition even before it was formed – has encountered great difficulty in recent days, when such voices are heard from within the exact same coalition.”
According to him, “What they understood in Likud and religious Zionism, they also need to understand in Otzma Yehudi. We are not in elections, there is no campaign, and they don’t have primaries either. There is no need for these statements, especially when we absorb extreme calls that amount to real incitement from the opposition.”