Likud rebels held up Thursday's swearing in ceremony; Netanyahu seeking to placate the three senior Likud MKs.
By JEREMY SHARONBenjamin Netanyahu(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held meetings with Likud rebels throughout Saturday night and into Sunday morning and continued to distribute ministerial positions ahead of the formation of the new government, scheduled to be sworn in Sunday afternoon. On Sunday morning, Netanyahu announced that Yoav Gallant will serve as Israel's education minister.MKs Avi Dichter, Tzachi Hanegbi and Gideon Sa’ar were invited by Netanyahu to discuss the various ministerial positions still open to them Saturday night, but by Sunday morning, none had received an office and were expected to remain as MKs without ministries.Since Thursday, when the government was originally scheduled to be sworn in, Netanyahu has been seeking to quell dissent within the Likud's top ranks after he skipped over some of the party's senior members in the distribution of the ministries. The large number of ministerial positions handed out to Blue and White and Labor has meant that Netanyahu has been left with too few portfolios to pay back his loyalists and placate senior Likud MKs.On Friday therefore, MK Dudi Amsalem, a Netanyahu hyper-loyalist and previous communications minister, was named as “Minister for Liaising with the Knesset,” a role which in the past was simply part of an existing minister’s duties.On Saturday night, Netanyahu announced that former economy minister Eli Cohen would become intelligence minister, while other appointments on Friday included MK Ofir Akunis as Minister for Regional Cooperation, and MK Yisrael Katz as Finance Minister.One of the last remaining senior portfolios left is education minister, and MKs Nir Barkat and Yoav Gallant are thought to be the two candidates for this position.MK Tzipi Hotovely is expected to be appointed as minister of the new Settlements Ministry.Late Thursday night, outgoing education minister Rafi Peretz, who is the sole representative of the Bayit Yehudi Party, finally entered the government after deserting his right-wing, religious allies in the Yamina Party.
Peretz was appointed Jerusalem Affairs, Heritage and National Projects Minister. Netanyahu lauded his entry into the government, saying that “religious-Zionism has entered the government,” a dig at Yamina which has accused the prime minister of deliberately excluding it from the coalition.As part of the coalition agreement between Likud and Bayit Yehudi, Peretz will continue to serve as an observer in the security cabinet, and as a full member in the ministerial committee for legislation.The agreement also included a commitment by the Likud that the “existing custom” would be preserved, in which the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, Sephardi ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist parties are each able to appoint a third of new rabbinical court judges.This allocation has traditionally been that a third of rabbinical judge appointments are each given to United Torah Judaism, Shas and the religious-Zionist parties – although the ultra-Orthodox parties have nevertheless interfered with and vetoed the candidates of their religious-Zionist counterparts in the past.Peretz, however, does not appear to have secured a position on the appointments committee for rabbinical court judges.
