Dew drops
For more than a decade, Tal Gan Zvi was his confidant and close confidant of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. He accompanied him to the Ministries of Education and Defense, was with him in opposition and in the coalition, created for him more and less bizarre political connections, from Smutrich to Abbas. For nearly a year he served as chief of staff in one of the more conflicted lodges that were here. On Monday afternoon it ended, Gan Zvi laconically announced his retirement, deepening the crisis and the feeling of mass abandonment around the prime minister and the right-wing party.
Just ten days earlier, Gan Zvi had recorded a significant victory in the bureau’s internal power struggles, with the semi-forced resignation of political adviser Shimrit Meir, who was considered his direct platoon leader. Now, with his departure, Bennett’s office is left without a figure with a stature or political or political experience. In fact, the closest position to him at the moment is Secretary of State Shalom Shlomo, who came to his post in general as an appointment of Yair Lapid and as his former adviser.
Gan Zvi is not one of the desert species, you will not see him running from studio to studio revealing the secrets of the bureau, nor does he play the character of the victim in an interview that will reveal “what really happened there.” Be that as it may, the resignation does not bode well for Bennett: if your most loyal man abandons in a moment of crisis and deepens the public disintegration of the ‘right’ – at a rate that overshadows the disintegration of Meron’s outline – and the public feeling of a failed prime minister, then he knows no more benefit And expectation in his presence.
Such an understanding comes first of all from the convention that the elections are imminent and the dissolution of the coalition is a matter of time, perhaps also the surrender to Zoabi (see more below) or the fact that Gan Zvi was in charge of MK Nir Orbach’s maintenance, hastened the end. A statement of future distrust The obvious conclusion is that Gan Zvi is convinced of one of the following three possibilities: either Bennett will join another party (there is a future, for example), or he will not succeed in the blocking percentage, or he will choose not to run in the first place. For the moments of depression, and it is advisable to abandon the ship before it sinks.
Suit up
Meanwhile, the election campaign opened this week with loud applause in the struggle for the backs of IDF fighters, in what is known as the “Dimensions for Studies” law and provides a subsidy for academic studies for soldiers who have completed their military service. Of the defense minister, who is once again seen as likely to squint in the not-too-distant future into a partnership with the opposition parties, a compromise that left both sides with barely half their lust in hand.
Without bothering readers with the details of the law and its shortcomings (including discrimination against the ultra-Orthodox, for example), we will only note that the original bill provided for a 66% subsidy to fighters. The minefield before the Likud was simple: if you vote against – you will be portrayed as harming IDF fighters, if you vote in favor – you have opened the door to a hail of laws that ‘cannot be opposed’, and only the coalition will focus on them until it finally disintegrates.
The Likud first tried to take a tough line of resistance, and at the same time, return war and focus the fire on the fact that, in the first place, the coalition cannot pass the law by itself, because it depends on IDF MKs who do not support IDF fighters. In the dangerous government of the State of Israel, the obvious argument that a coalition can not rely on the support of the opposition has been heard quite a bit, as well as a reminder that the same coalition dropped an opposition law several months ago to increase soldiers’ salaries. The law, including leaks and recordings from the faction meeting, with quotes that are not among the wisest.
Then Netanyahu set the opposite trap, saying, we are ready to support the law, and provided that funding is increased to one hundred percent. If Zoabi can go out with more than a billion shekels in out-of-pocket expenses to Arab local authorities after a weekend protest episode, there is no reason that a budget earmarked for soldiers could not grow by another 50 million shekels, to gain the support of fifty-three opposition representatives.
On Monday evening, discussions on the law began and no solution was in sight. Both sides climbed trees and it seemed that even an outbreak of monkey pox would not bring them down to the ground. The RAAM made it clear to the coalition leaders that they would not be able to support the law, and it seems that Lapid & Co. realized that too well they could no longer go out here.
Late at night, the defense minister spoke and decided to drop a bombshell in the form of a compromise proposal – coalition members would support the opposition’s reservation to raise funding to seventy-five percent (naturally, submitting reservations requires some creativity Also a reservation of seventy-five per cent).
Representatives of the parties were summoned to the courtroom while the speakers spread the time, and eventually an agreement was reached: the opposition would support the law, and the coalition would support raising funding to 75%. But an exemption with nothing is impossible, and when the vote on the reservation of one hundred percent came, members of the opposition bothered to shout “one hundred percent for IDF fighters” one after another, and shout contempt for Lapid and his comrades who voted against. Do not worry, the Yesh Atid campaign also has material left, when ahead of the law’s approval in the third reading, the joint vote declared a no-confidence motion, and the Likud MKs slipped out of the plenum and left the coalition to approve the law alone.
Zezebi
A month after the formation of the government, I sat down for a conversation with one of the ultra-Orthodox MKs, one of the sharpest of them all. The surgery, which turns out to be the most up-to-date.
According to the same MK, the life expectancy of the current government was about a year, plus or minus, and he expected the breaking point to be bilateral: on the one hand, right-wing MKs who would break the pressure and start to falter (Orbach-Kara-Shaked) or completely defect (Silman) On the other hand, MKs from Ra’am and Meretz that the increasing environmental pressure will cause them to weaken the coalition and perhaps even dismantle it.
As for RAAM, even given the unforeseen variable of the death of Said al-Kharomi – the most significant rebel in the party ranks – the party is on a winding day-to-day trajectory, and it is almost clear that it will have a hard time staying in the current situation for many months. Zoabi event in a surprise that stunned the pair of prime ministers.
The same interpretation of the same MK, was based on personal conversations with some Meretz members who flattened in his ears the environmental pressure exerted on them on various issues, such that with all the goodwill and softness that characterizes the right wing in the current government, they can not promote. Including issues of religion and state (Shabbat public relations, civil marriage), economics, the legal system and more. The fact that Meretz has not visited the coalition since the era of Ehud Barak did not benefit its members, on the contrary, the voters became accustomed to a rigid and militant line, and found it difficult to understand where the ‘sublime’ ideals had evaporated.
Three Meretz MKs (Michal Rosin, Gabi Lasky and Ali Salala) are serving as Norwegians and no real danger is expected from them to the integrity of the coalition. Needless to say, the three ministers and deputies (Nitzan Horowitz, Tamar Zandberg and Issawi Fridge) And there are signs of discomfort. The focus, therefore, was from the beginning on the three MKs – Yair Golan, Jida Rina Zoabi and Musi Raz. All three are clear ideologues of the extreme left, and all three have little to lose from a possible transition to the opposition. One important caveat: None of them are suspected of political stupidity, and they understand very well that they must not be portrayed as having brought Netanyahu and the right back to power.
Raz and Golan almost provided the goods with a series of problematic statements that forced MKs to the right and a new hope to swallow frogs serially. The mysteries with Shas MKs led to a dramatic overthrow of the law in the Knesset plenum.
Zoabi lowered her profile and waited, she realized that her appointment to a position that is supposed to represent Israel and Israeli propaganda in the world is a difficult challenge to perform and gave the chairman of Yesh Atid the time to advance the process calmly, with caressing and uncritical communication. The failure to deal with Zoabi, and rightly so, repeatedly examined the limits of the MK’s patience, which was constantly under massive pressure from her natural environment. The rising wave of terrorism and tensions with Arab society, including the tumultuous funeral of al-Jazeera campaigner Al Shirin Abu Akala and the clashes on the Temple Mount, have brought her to a state of no choice.
It lasted two days and included a campaign of subservience, in which Zoabi humiliated the chairman of her party, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, played on Bennett and Lapid’s nerves and was quick to inform the whole nation that “there is no way back to the coalition.” It seems that Zoabi positively adopted the lyrics of the song “Jerusalem of Gold”, even if in a different meaning from the poet’s intention.
Bottom line: Zoabi will not be the sixty-first finger to disperse the Knesset, nor does it appear that she intended to do so in the first place. She may have considered resigning from the Knesset at all, and it may have been just a growing signal of ‘hold me’ (and you will pay, of course). It is also not inconceivable that she felt offended by the non-promotion of the Chinese appointment or even conducted silent contacts about future integration in the joint list.
The coalition’s problem is not Zoabi games per se, but the instability they provoke. After a first week that ended with optimism and a sense that the summer session could be survived, the energetic MK arrived and shook the ship again. In the religious sector and threw the political system into chaos.
The direct result of the minimal and temporary uprising that led to it, is a painful reminder to the leaders of the coalition parties of their fragile situation ahead of the elections and the need to radicalize positions. The second result is a significant decrease in the electoral value of the Shaked trio on the ‘right’. It suddenly becomes clear that the government may fall by mistake even without them. The value of Shaked, Auerbach and Kara fell last Friday more than the rate of stock market decline in the past two weeks. Do not be surprised if the Triple Alliance collapses into itself soon, with each of its members looking for independent armor for the day after.
Rule of law and laughter
And it is impossible without the weekly hypocrisy corner: Just a week ago, government ministers, the legal system and the media unanimously condemned MK Yitzhak Pindros of Torah Judaism for his harsh words against the Supreme Court, including exciting quotes about “the destruction of democracy” and calls for a criminal investigation. The tone changed completely.
It started with a justice of the peace who dared Rahmana Letzelen to hint that Jews are actually allowed by law to pray on the Temple Mount (of course we do not deal with the halakhic aspect of the matter, according to which ascending the Temple Mount is forbidden for fear of Crete), and continued with a public rebuke One fool to burn an entire forest, “directing the fire in direct formation to the judge.
By the time the lines were written, there had been little faint condemnation from the back lines of the coalition, a court spokeswoman had yet to issue a weeping manifesto on behalf of the president and the media was yawning in clear disinterest. Or as MK Pindros concluded, some are allowed and some are not.