Naftali Bennett is just a “puppet prime minister,” while his partners in his governing coalition are those who are truly in charge, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday night at a Likud rally in Tel Aviv.
“Yair Lapid is the prime minister for foreign affairs, Benny Gantz is the prime minister for defense and Avigdor Liberman is the prime minister for finance,” Netanyahu said mockingly to the thousands of activists who attended the rally.
Netanyahu vowed to bring down the government as soon as possible, which he said came to power by tricking Israeli voters.
When a heckler shouted that “Bennett and Lapid need to die,” Netanyahu responded that if he was planted at the event, the heckler “did his job,” and if he was not he was a “fool,” adding that what was said was “unacceptable.”
The head of the Darkenu movement, Yaya Fink, asked the attorney-general to probe the heckler, warning that the next political assassination could be around the corner and must be prevented.
Likud MKs who see themselves as Netanyahu’s successor attended the rally.
Former Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, who is the MK closest to Netanyahu, revealed for the first time on Thursday night that during coalition talks, Netanyahu agreed to New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar’s request to hold a snap leadership primary to choose Netanyahu’s successor, who would rotate with Sa’ar as prime minister. In an interview with Channel 13, Levin said that even when that demand of Sa’ar’s was accepted, he chose to instead allow the current government to be formed.
Sa’ar denied Levin’s charges. Levin said in the interview that when Netanyahu offered him to be prime minister in rotation with Sa’ar or Bennett, he turned it down, because he did not consider himself ready for the post.
In another report on the same channel, Lapid agreed that if the current government would fall before a state budget would be passed, Bennett would remain caretaker prime minister. A new Basic Law clarifying the role of the prime minister and alternate prime minister is set to pass in the Knesset next week.
Meanwhile, in Yamina, anger increased against MK Abir Kara, who has refused to quit the Knesset via the Norwegian Law since becoming a deputy minister for regulatory matters in the Prime Minister’s Office last week.
Ministers and deputy ministers quit in Yesh Atid and New Hope since Tuesday night’s expansion of the Norwegian Law, which enables ministers to quit the Knesset and be replaced by the next candidate on their party’s list. They can return to the Knesset at their replacement’s expense if they quit their ministerial post.
The next candidate on Yamina’s list is the party’s director-general, Stella Weinstein.
“The entire faction wants to see Stella in the Knesset,” a source in the party said. “When Abir Kara voted for expanding the Norwegian Law, what did he think he was doing?”
Kara told KAN Radio on Thursday morning that he “came to the Knesset to influence people and advance a free market economy” and he intends to remain in the Knesset in order to do so.
Zehut Party head Moshe Feiglin announced on Thursday that he will return to the Likud Party, where he served as an MK in the 19th Knesset. He called upon his supporters to join the party in its membership drive.
“When reality is crazy and priorities have changed, I decided we must return to the Likud mother ship and continue our journey there,” Feiglin wrote on Twitter. “We will do this with modesty and humility and great love in wider cooperation with the Likud’s traditional public.”