Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu agreed on at least one thing this past week: the need to swear in a government as soon as possible. Lapid wants to prevent the “interim period” in which the government ministries are located, and Netanyahu is waiting to “return the crown to its former glory.” Netanyahu intends to finish with the coalition agreements as soon as possible. They will be thin and may be drafted as a basic outline document, but will include code names for extensive revisions in governance, the legal system, and the budgeting of the religious and ultra-Orthodox yeshiva world. With his face forward, Netanyahu will seek to finish dividing the cases during the next week and announce, if not also swear in, the 37th government.
The new responsible adult in the block
During the meetings of the bloc’s representatives with Yariv Levin and Netanyahu since the beginning of the week, it seems that a new “Aryeh Deri” has been born for the right-wing bloc. The chairman of religious Zionism, Bezalel Smotrich, steps into the shoes of the “adult in charge” in the bloc. On Sunday of this week, he left a meeting with Netanyahu, met with Gafni in the Knesset, and from there moved on to a meeting in the evening with Aryeh Deri in an office building in Jerusalem. Along the way, he also made phone calls with His partner Ben Gabir who died in Eilat, his main goal is to establish a government as soon as possible.
He placed before Netanyahu two huge demands for the finance or defense portfolio, so if Deri’s face is in the finance, he intends to screw in the defense ministry even without the usual military record. Even in the opposition, Smotrich was involved in coordinating moves, he and his team signed off on bringing Idit Silman from the management of the coalition for dissolution. When they presented the achievement to Netanyahu, he wondered how he was the last to hear about it (apart from Bennett).
While his partners fear an extortionist image, he intends to put on the table a demand to double the yeshiva budgets, both ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionist, to a NIS 2.5 billion annual budget. If the Ra’am representatives have won all their demands, Smotrich does not intend to remain modest in what will be put on the table. With Deri and Gafani, they are aiming for files and agreements in the past (remove the treasury file), including additional budgets for education and a clause to overcome by a majority of 61, so it is reasonable to assume that the agreements with The ultra-orthodox parties will be the first to sign. An official in Torah Judaism explained simply today: “We issued previous agreements and made some amendments.”
The underground battles are on the way to calm
On Tuesday next week, the 25th Knesset will be sworn in. After the parade of recommendations before the president earned Yair Lapid only 28 recommendations (Yesh Atid and Labor together), it is likely that the internal factional campaign riots in the center-left will be forgotten. Although Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu refused to recommend Lapid to form the government as well as the members of the state camp, Lapid is expected to naturally land the position of opposition chairman.
The chairman of Labor, Merav Michaeli, who dedicated her loss speech to Lapid and blamed him for the election results, will also find a way to silence the party in front of him, also to calm her party. To his rival Amir Peretz, the latter amended the party’s constitution so that the election of a new chairman will not be held 14 months after elections, but after general elections are announced. These, according to the work members, are still far away.
But the most interesting arena in the opposition benches for the future will take place in Gantz’s state camp party. There, a skilled pair of politicians is expected to lead a liberal right-wing agenda, which will provide a counterpoint to the new government. To do this, they will have to either change the existing party, or split from the former Chief of Staff. Gideon Sa’ar and Ze’ev Elkin are the most experienced duo in the nascent opposition, and the question that hangs over the future of Gantz’s state camp is as to the two’s plans.
Officials at the state camp headquarters said last week that Saar was heard saying on the eve of the elections: “Tomorrow at ten o’clock every man for himself.” Sa’ar, by the way, vehemently denies these things. The day after the elections, spokespeople for the state camp quickly released a photo of Gantz, Sa’ar and Eisenkot sitting together to calm the rumor mill.
Despite this, the political system estimates that the generals, Eisenkot and Gantz, will not survive on the opposition benches for long and Saar and Elkin have plans for the day after. On the horizon they see at least 9 mandates that they can return to: from Ayelet Shaked and those who made their way this year from Tikva New and Right to vote for the right-wing bloc as a protest against the outgoing government. They have the time and experience, and Gantz should be worried.
The Knesset is only getting weaker
Finally, one of the positions on the Likud’s negotiating table is the next speaker of the Knesset who will step into the shoes of Miki Levy Mish Atid. Traditionally, the speaker of the Knesset is an appointment of the person who makes up the government, so control over both institutions is uniform. But over the years, and even more so in the last Knesset, the legislator’s intention in the separation of authorities that the Knesset be the auditing institution of the government has been violated. Any “government” appointment that will be a reaction to Levy’s appointment may use tools that will further weaken the position of the Knesset, while it is trying on another front to fight for its position in restraining the judicial system.