On a day-to-day basis, despite the outward appearance of satisfaction in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition after the government approved the budget and after Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon declared that he won’t quit the government after the police submit their recommendations in the prime minister’s investigations, things are completely paralyzed.
The Ministerial Committee for legislation is barely functioning for the second week in a row, and the coalition is experiencing difficulties in Knesset votes. Everything is difficult, and the first person to admit that is new Coalition Chairman David Amsalem, who received a very difficult inheritance from Knesset Member David Bitan after the latter got into trouble with the law.
From a historical aspect as well, the fact that the budget was approved does not necessarily point to a future state of calm. Unlike what some may believe, the state budget is hardly an indication of the government’s stability. In the past 30 years or so, governments haven’t been brought down over a budget. The previous government, in case you’ve forgotten, came to its end after approving a budget, which even made it through its first reading at the Knesset.
The person who pushed for the approval of the 2019 budget wasn’t Netanyahu; it was Kahlon. The Kulanu leader’s political instincts led him to pass the budget quickly in a bid to convey political stability ahead of the police recommendations on Netanyahu, because Netanyahu is the only person more concerned about these recommendations than Kahlon.
But the coalition isn’t the only place with a fictitious calm. A quiet debate has been held in the Labor Party recently, below the surface, over the possibility of replacing Avi Gabby if he keeps declining in the polls. There are some people in the Labor Party who, quite unsurprisingly, are tensely waiting for an opportunity for another political round.
Gabbay’s problem and the erosion it had caused, Labor sources say, has to do with a lack of strategy. As the public agenda concerning the Shabbat laws and corruption has played into the hands of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, Gabbay remains with no card to play.
The ultra-Orthodox parties’ celebrations over the marvelous achievements they have brought their public bolster Lapid’s “base.”
Furthermore, Lapid’s party was joined last week by a former deputy shin Bet chief, Ram Ben Barak, in the middle of a crisis with a former Shin Bet director, MK Yaakov Peri.
The fact that Lapid is growing stronger at Gabbay’s expense is bad news for Netanyahu too, as the prime minister would rather see the votes being split between his two rivals in a more balanced manner.
But in this whole political imbroglio, one good thing did happen last week—at least as far as our politicians are concerned. Wouldn’t you like to sit down with all your colleagues once a year and decide together to raise your salary by NIS 5,000? Well, this is exactly how things are done in a certain workplace. It’s called the Knesset.
