Netanyahu indicates patience running out on coalition antics
Prime minister calls for government stability amid ongoing coalition crisis.
By HERB KEINONPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem November 23(photo credit: REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at Sunday's cabinet meeting that his patience with the ongoing coalition crisis is ending, saying he will “draw conclusions” if the coalition in-fighting does not cease.“We need governmental stability and proper management,” he told his cabinet ministers. “This is needed for Israeli citizens and for the state. Unfortunately this is not what we have seen recently.”Netanyahu said that not a day goes by when there are not threats or dictates from one coalition partner or another, amid the “lashing out by by ministers in the government against the government and the person at it's head.”“I hope that we can return to proper management, which is what the public expects of us,” he said. “That is the only way to run a state, and if not we will draw the conclusions.”Prior to the meeting, Netanyahu confidant Yuval Steinitz, who is the intelligence minister, hit back at Finance Minister Yair Lapid for saying over the weekend that Netanayhu was standing aside as everything is crumbling around him.“This reminds me of a 16-year-old adolescent who says at first he wants to do everything by himself, 'the economists and the prime minister don't interest me, I don't need their directives,' and then after a year-and-a-half, when everything collapses, he says, 'they are not helping me'.”Netanyahu also used the opening of the cabinet meeting to condemn Saturday night's arson at the bilingual school in Jerusalem, saying that Israel would act aggressively and in an equal manner to “restore quiet and law and order to all parts of Jerusalem.”
