Former Finance Minister MK Yisrael Katz on Monday accused former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partner at the time, Benny Gantz, of toppling the last government due to a clause in the coalition agreement that created a political stalemate over passing the state budget.
Katz, speaking on 103FM radio, said that the coalition agreement held the budget captive to the prime ministerial rotation agreement, adding that Gantz was “justified from his perspective” to do so.
The former finance minister's comments essentially concede that the last government collapsed because Netanyahu was not willing to hand over power to Gantz by allowing the budget to pass.
The coalition agreement signed by Likud and Blue and White called for a prime ministerial rotation after 18 months, but that if the government collapsed, Gantz would take over as caretaker prime minister when the Knesset was dissolved.
According to the agreement, however, if a state-budget was not passed after the set period - which automatically triggers to the dissolution of the Knesset and new elections – Netanyahu would remain prime minister.
If the budget would have been passed, there would have been no recourse for Netanyahu to stop Gantz becoming prime minister.
“Because of Bibi and Gantz there isn’t a budget because their agreement included a crazy clause, that said if the budget doesn’t pass then the rotation deal won’t happen,” Katz said in his radio interview on Monday.
“We were all thrown into a dispute over the rotation amid the budget [process]… Gantz thought he was fighting, and from his perspective rightly so, for the rotation agreement to be implemented, and he included the budget into this,” continued the former minister. “The political paralysis prevented the passing of the budget and the arrangements bill,” he added.
Katz’s criticism of Netanyahu comes after the leader of the opposition suffered a couple of significant setbacks in his own party.
Netanyahu’s candidate for the judicial selection committee from the Likud was defeated handily in a party secret ballot, and the eventual Likud candidate for the committee was defeated by an MK from the Religious Zionist Party.
During his interview, Katz also strongly criticized the current government for its plan to raise property taxes in the upcoming state budget, along with increased taxes for plastic single-use tableware and additional fees for some medical consultations.