Blue and White: No election will be set in Israel until after US race
Trump loss seen as catalyst for initiating race when Netanyahu is vulnerable
By GIL HOFFMANAlternate Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Benny Gantz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a vote at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on August 24, 2020.(photo credit: OREN BEN HAKOON/FLASH90)
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz will not decide whether to initiate the next election in Israel until it is clear who won the election in the United States, senior officials close to Gantz in Blue and White told The Jerusalem Post at the Knesset on Monday.The officials spoke after opposition leader Yair Lapid announced during Monday’s Knesset plenary meeting that his Yesh Atid-Telem Party would initiate a proposal to dissolve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and go to elections next Wednesday.“If by then there is no budget approval, then I have no doubt that this time Blue and White will keep their promise and vote with us to disperse the Knesset, send this terrible government home and go to elections,” Lapid said in a debate on his party’s no-confidence motion in the government, which was defeated by a 47-34 vote.The Blue and White officials were annoyed by Lapid’s move. They said it likely would still be unclear by next Wednesday who won the election in the US, which will be a key component in his party’s decision about when to initiate an election in Israel.Presumably, if US President Donald Trump, who is close to Netanyahu, loses, it would help persuade Gantz to bring Netanyahu down by initiating the election when Netanyahu is vulnerable.“We alone will decide the time of our next election,” a Blue and White official said.Yesh Atid officials responded that Blue and White leaders had set a deadline of the beginning of November due to the timing for passing the 2021 budget, and it was too late to change it.“They set a deadline,” a Yesh Atid official said. “We assume they won’t back down on their own deadline.”Earlier Monday, Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked proposed a bill to dissolve the 23rd Knesset and head to elections. But she would have to wait 45 days for her bill to come to a vote in the Knesset. Other opposition parties have such bills already ready for an immediate vote.At his Yesh Atid-Telem faction meeting, opposition leader Lapid mocked Netanyahu for telling his cabinet that Israel lacks funding for capsules for first and second grades and the cabinet decision for first and second graders to return to school for only three days a week.
“The children are losing their minds,” Lapid said. “The parents can’t work. What will a parent who needs to go back to work do? Tell their employer that they’re only working three times a week?“If Netanyahu doesn’t have the money to fund schools for our children, how does he have the ability to fund a government of 36 ministers? The ability to fund a water minister and a made-up minister for strengthening made-up communities? How does he have the money to pay for a plane for himself at a cost of a billion shekels? If you don’t have the money, why do you keep transferring billions in political bribes to your coalition partners?”Lapid said the current government is “the most wasteful and irresponsible government in the history of the State of Israel.”Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman called on Monday for a state commission of inquiry for both the Submarine Affair and the Israeli approval of the US sale of F35s to the United Arab Emirates.“A serious state commission is needed to investigate the entire story from beginning to end,” Liberman told his Yisrael Beytenu faction meeting. “Either the prime minister or defense minister is lying, and it doesn’t matter which one.”Celia Jean contributed to this report.
