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Israel’s Foreign Minister Snubs Netanyahu Coalition Invite

Israel’s Foreign Minister Snubs Netanyahu Coalition Invite

By Ofira Koopmans, dpa (TNS)

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Monday that he will not join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, dealing a blow to the incumbent’s emerging coalition in the 11th hour of negotiations.

“We are going to serve the people from the opposition,” he said of his six-seat hardline right-wing Israel Beiteinu party.

Defying predictions, Netanyahu’s right-wing, nationalist Likud won 30 seats in the March 17 election, paving the way for him to serve a fourth term in office as premier.

The incumbent must present his government by Wednesday midnight.

Lieberman’s ultra-nationalist Beiteinu has long been considered a natural ally for Netanyahu’s Likud party in coalition negotiations, but Lieberman’s rejection means Netanyahu may be reduced to a slim majority of 61 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

Lieberman told reporters in Jerusalem that he will also resign from his post as foreign minister.

Netanyahu’s Likud party signed its first two coalition agreements Wednesday last week, with Kulanu and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Lieberman cited promises made in those agreements as grounds for not joining the coalition.

The coalition Netanyahu was building with two ultra Orthodox parties, another right-wing party and the center-right Kulanu party of finance minister-designate Moshe Kahlon “is not to our taste, to say the least,” Lieberman said.

“This government has no intention of uprooting Hamas,” he said of the Islamist Palestinian movement in de facto control of the Gaza Strip, mentioning one reason of his dissatisfaction.

The next Netanyahu government would not be a nationalist one, “but the personification of opportunism,” he charged.

According to recent local media reports, Lieberman holds a grudge against Netanyahu, blaming him for an ongoing police investigation into allegations of corruption by senior members of his party.

The Likud is also negotiating with another ultra-Orthodox party, Shas (seven seats) and with the pro-settler, right-wing Jewish Home (eight seats).

Netanyahu still has a good chance of presenting his fourth government by the Wednesday midnight deadline. But if he fails, President Reuven Rivlin can appoint another lawmaker to the task of forming a government. That would then likely be Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog.

As part of the agreement signed last week with UTJ, a social reform program introduced with much fanfare during the previous government, will be canceled.

The program had included criminal sanctions for ultra-Orthodox Torah students who refuse to report for compulsory military service. It had also included a cancellation of other privileges and financial benefits for the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress at the Capitol on March 3, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)

Israel’s Parliament Disbands, Sets Elections For March 17

Israel’s Parliament Disbands, Sets Elections For March 17

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JERUSALEM — Israeli lawmakers voted Monday to dissolve the parliament and hold elections on March 17, making the current government one of the shortest-lived in the country’s history.

With some cellphone cameras flashing but no objections, lawmakers passed the motion at the end of an hourslong discussion of last-minute legislation that included no-confidence motions and harsh criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Lawmaker Dov Khenin called the Netanyahu government “bad and dangerous” and said it had blocked all chances for a political solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. Jamal Zahalka accused Netanyahu and his ministers of giving orders that killed thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and called for a no-confidence vote that would be a “harsh indictment against a criminal government.”

The last law passed by the Knesset before it voted to disband was a bill allowing the jailing of African migrants entering Israel illegally. This was the government’s third bid to pass the controversial law, after the Supreme Court ruled that two previous bills approved by parliament were unconstitutional violations of rights, and threw them out.

In a statement after the vote, the community of African asylum seekers and refugees expressed “deep sorrow” over the bill. “A majority of lawmakers … would rather hide us in a desert jail than look reality in the eye. We are asylum seekers, not criminals,” they said. A group of Israeli rights organizations said they would appeal the law to the high court again.

After a protracted political crisis that paralyzed the government, Netanyahu undid his ruling coalition last week when he fired two top ministers and lost four more and called for early elections, two years ahead of schedule.

The immediate crisis was sparked by a contested bill to declare Israel a Jewish state, as well as the proposed budget. The disputes unleashed deep-seated differences within Netanyahu’s coalition that erupted into a fierce, personal confrontation between him and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid. Netanyahu fired them both in a dramatic, televised announcement.

Even before the vote, the election campaign was in full swing.

Addressing a business conference in Tel Aviv before the expected vote, Netanyahu called on voters to give him a “clear mandate” to handle economic, defense and diplomatic challenges Israel faces.

“This requires governability,” Netanyahu said, referring to Israel’s fractious political system that makes it difficult for governments to last.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog declared his Labor Party would head the next government and lead the country “to a better future.” Herzog urged legislators to “put ego aside” to allow the formation of a large center-left bloc to challenge the right-wing dominance that could give Netanyahu a fourth term.
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(Sobelman is a Los Angeles Times special correspondent.)

AFP Photo/Gali Tibbon