by Hans Izaak Kriek*
Israeli people get a new government. Negotiating teams representing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz met recently as talks continued to hammer out the details of a national unity government, Israeli media reported.
The two sides agreed that Yaakov Litzman of the religious United Torah Judaism Party will remain as health minister while Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party will receive the justice, communications and culture portfolios as well as the leadership of several Knesset committees.
The unity government’s central focus for the first six months will be the coronavirus fight with a special team set up for that purpose. During this time, the government’s policy positions will be formulated areas other than the health and economic crisis.
One of the other agreements was that former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein will not return to the position and a new speaker of the house will be a candidate accepted by both sides. The veto on Edelstein’s appointment was one of the key demands from Gantz, mainly due to Edelstein’s refusal to comply with a High Court ruling last week to convene a vote for his replacement.
Edelstein will apparently pay a price for what he considered standing on principle and protecting the independence of parliament last week when he did not allow the Knesset to convene despite the demand by the Supreme Court. As the opposition took control of powerful legislative committees, Edelstein abruptly suspended debate in a bid to gain time.
Although the final decision on the speaker has not yet been made, Channel 13 political affairs analyst Barak Ravid noted the irony given that the apparent compromise is another Likud member who backed Edelstein’s actions.
The Likud will not nominate Edelstein as speaker of the Knesset because he violated a High Court ruling, and instead appoint (Tourism Minister) Yariv Levin who encouraged Edelstein to violate the High Court ruling.
With the country suffering massive economic losses and unemployment skyrocketing due to the pandemic, there appears to be little chance that the peace process or other issues will return to the agenda anytime soon.
This may hurt chances of adopting the Trump administration’s peace deal as Gantz is a likely obstacle to settlement annexation and putting the Trump peace plan into action, despite publicly stating that he supports it.
US President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the news to congratulate him that he’ll be forming Israel’s next government, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
The White House said in a statement that Trump and Netanyahu ‘discussed the latest developments on the coronavirus pandemic, and the president thanked the prime minister for his strong action to stop its spread’.
“The two leaders agreed to cooperate closely to combat the virus and minimize its global impact,” The White House statement said, without mentioning the premiership.
As things formally stand, it is Gantz who has been charged by President Reuven Rivlin with forming Israel’s next government, having been recommended as prime minister by 61 members of parliament. But the anticipated unity deal would see Netanyahu stay on as prime minister for the next 18 months, at which point he would hand over to Gantz, in a ‘rotation’ deal that many observers believe will not play out.
Since the March 2 election, in which Netanyahu’s Likud party won the most seats but his right-wing bloc fell three seats shy of forming a majority coalition, only Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had phoned the premier to offer congratulations.
After elections in April 2019, which Netanyahu initially appeared to have won but ultimately proved unable to form a coalition, Trump called the Likud leader the next day from Air Force One with congratulations.
Gantz was handed the mandate to form a government on March 16, but appeared to have no clear path to forging a stable coalition. Both he and Netanyahu, who has run Israel for over a decade but is facing criminal charges, had publicly touted the need for a national emergency unity government in light of the coronavirus crisis, but neither had appeared to make any meaningful steps toward that goal before a night phone call between the two.
Gantz was elected Knesset speaker Thursday evening as part of the emerging unity deal.
According to the reported pact taking shape, Gantz is set to partner with Netanyahu in a unity coalition, serving initially as foreign or defense minister and then taking over as prime minister in September or October 2021.
Furious at Gantz’s move, and accusing him of stealing the votes of their supporters and handing them to Netanyahu, the Yesh Atid and Telem factions filed a formal request to break away from Gantz late on Thursday afternoon, leaving only Gantz’s Israel Resilience faction to join forces with Netanyahu’s Likud. Lapid had reportedly told Gantz he preferred that Israel go to fourth elections than see Blue and White partner with Netanyahu.
Gantz and his Blue and White colleagues had vowed through election campaigns in the past year not to sit in a government with Netanyahu so long as he is facing criminal charges. But Gantz said Thursday and Friday that the pandemic and the electoral deadlock necessitated atypical behavior to drag Israel out of crisis. (The prime minister’s trial was supposed to begin on March 17 but has been postponed to May amid the coronavirus-related emergency restrictions that have shut down most Israeli court activity.)
Gantz is expected to resign the speakership after a unity government is formed, to be replaced by a Likud MK (members of the Knesset), potentially even the previous Knesset speaker, Yuli Edelstein, who refused to carry out a Supreme Court order to hold a vote on who would succeed him, and resigned.
As I write this article I got information from the Prime Minister’s Office saying Netanyahu aide tests positive for coronavirus. If the aide and the prime minister were in the same room for more than 15 minutes Netanyahu may be required to quarantine.
*International political commentator for European Business Review and editor-in-chief at Kriek Media International
By: N. Peter Kramer
