Jewish Home demands reform of security cabinet as condition for supporting Liberman as defense minister; Likud pans move as ‘political suicide’
Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett told members of his Knesset faction that his party was ready to vote against the appointment of Avigdor Liberman as defense minister if his demands on reforming the security cabinet were not met.
The showdown between Bennett and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the reform threatens to topple the government, according to Netanyahu confidant Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi.
Bennett is demanding Netanyahu appoint a military attaché to each member of the sensitive 10-member cabinet committee to provide ministers with real-time security updates, coordinate additional fact-finding visits to IDF bases and other military zones, and facilitate easier access to classified information.
Bennett has threatened that his party will vote against Liberman’s appointment, scuttling the coalition deal signed Wednesday with Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party. The 61-seat coalition needs Jewish Home’s eight votes to pass the appointment in the 120-member Knesset.
“Saving lives is more important than cabinet portfolios,” Bennett told his fellow lawmakers. “We’re willing to take this to the end.”
In a late-Saturday Facebook post, the education minister explained that the security cabinet, “which commands the chief of staff and the IDF, which makes fateful life-and-death decisions, must stop being blind. Today it is blind.”
Cabinet ministers, he said, “consistently have critical information kept from them.”
Likud has warned that a vote against Liberman’s appointment would mean the immediate firing of Jewish Home’s three cabinet ministers – Education Minister Bennett, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel – and likely the collapse of the coalition.
Even with the five-seat Yisrael Beytenu on board, a coalition without Jewish Home would shrink to 58 seats, losing its parliamentary minority and possibly triggering new elections.
“We are on the brink of a political crisis, which may get worse on Monday if Bennett votes against the government and as a result the Jewish Home is no longer in the coalition,” Tzahi Hanegbi told Channel 2 on Saturday.
Hanegbi, who heads the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said there was justification for the call to improve how the security cabinet operates. “But this improvement cannot, in my opinion, come through an ultimatum,” he said, but rather through coordination.
Netanyahu offered to establish a committee headed by former National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror that would examine ways to reform the security cabinet. Jewish Home rejected the idea out of hand, accusing the prime minister of stalling.
Netanyahu canceled Sunday’s regularly scheduled cabinet meeting amid the crisis.
Liberman’s appointment must be approved by the cabinet, and then by the Knesset. Netanyahu is believed to have a majority among government ministers even without Jewish Home, but will need the party’s votes for the Knesset vote. Both votes are currently scheduled for Monday.
Hanegbi said that Bennett’s ultimatum was essentially “political suicide,” especially if the threat is carried out and Jewish Home votes against the government to torpedo the coalition deal.
If this right-wing government falls, or, alternatively, if a left-wing party joins the coalition instead of Jewish Home, the party will pay a heavy political price with its own constituents, Hanegbi cautioned.
Bennett’s demands are only the latest crisis for Netanyahu to result from his appointment of Liberman. The move led the sitting defense minister, Likud’s Moshe Ya’alon, to resign and issue a bitter critique of the government, warning that “extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement.”
On Friday, a minister from the centrist Kulanu party, a member of the coalition, announced that he too was resigning in protest over the coalition deal with Liberman, accusing the government of leading Israel down a path to destruction, wrecking its ties with the US and silencing dissent on everything from the gas deal to soldiers’ conduct.
Environmental Protection Minister Avi Gabbay — who is not a member of Knesset but rather an external candidate appointed to the job last year by Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon — told reporters Friday “it wasn’t easy for me to be part of the government, a government that has entirely upset the relationship with the world’s strongest power.”
“This week, a year after my appointment, came the pill I could not swallow: Ya’alon’s dismissal and Liberman’s appointment are an unusual step, even in politics. I urge the prime minister to wise up before it’s too late, remember that security is security and to rely on people, leadership, and not just tanks and planes,” Gabbay said.
As reported by The Times of Israel