2022 election: Today (Monday), the Knesset committee unanimously approved the split requests of Matan Kahane, Shirley Pinto and Naftali Bennett from the Right Party. This, after Idit Silman’s request to split from the party was rejected. Sources in the coalition said: “There is a limit to every prank. No reward will be given to Silman.”
The committee requested a revision following the results of the vote on Silman, and it went into a long break, during which it appears that agreements were reached: after the coalition ambushed and torpedoed Silman’s split, it announced that it would oppose Kahane, Pinto and Bennett’s split requests. Therefore it was agreed that all three would split together from the right as a third faction, when immediately after the split Bennett would merge back to the right.
Accordingly, after the committee came back from the break, the chairman of the committee announced that MK Matan Kahana had withdrawn his request for division by consent, so the previous vote was canceled. The committee moved on to discuss the request of Kahane, Pinto and Bennett to divide on the right. The committee voted in favor unanimously and the meeting was closed.
MK Yulia Malinovski, who was among the opponents, suggested that MK Silman resign or petition the High Court against the Knesset committee’s decision. After the vote, Malinovski wrote on Twitter: “I am not ready to give awards to those who dragged the State of Israel into unnecessary elections.”
I have now voted against Silman’s division from the right wing.
Not ready to give awards to those who dragged the State of Israel into unnecessary elections.— Yulia Malinovsky (@YuliaMalinovsky) August 15, 2022
The right’s request was to split by agreement, so that six members would split from it and MK Silman would remain and be in a single faction under the name “Amona”. This is a step that is only possible when it is reached by agreement and has no effect on the funding unit.
As mentioned, the majority opposed (Malinovski, Toporovski, Muati and Tor Paz). The Knesset Committee’s legal advisor, Adv. Arbel Astrakhan, explained that the Knesset Committee’s objection to a request for distribution by consent is an exceptional case, and now the issue is being examined during the break until the debate resumes.
According to her, she remembers only one such case in which the committee previously rejected a request for distribution by consent of MKs on the list of retirees who wanted to join Gaidamak’s party.