Dramatic turn of events at the Knesset at 2 in the morning

[Sylvia]

Elections called off
Unity government instead
Mofaz to enter the Netanyahu cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister
Kadima to join the Likud-led coalition

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national...tions-1.428843

[Aliyah1995]

Oh well, there goes the extra vacation day I was looking forward to having, as a result of working on a "national holiday".

[sharonbn]

Mofaz is the epitome opportunistic

[Aliyah1995]

Sharonbn, I ask you the following question in all seriousness and because you have lived here your whole life: Who, in your opinion, is there in the Knesset who is straight, not an opportunistic, corruption free (or, at least as corruption free as can humanly be expected for one involved in politics), would put the interests of the country first and foremost, even above his/her career, etc. I don't care if they are left, right, or center, secular, religious, Jewish or not. Who would you say fits the aforementioned description? And, they have to be someone CURRENTLY in politics or who has a good chance of being in politics (i.e. not someone who has already passed away or who has LONG retired from politics).

[sharonbn]

Shelly Yechimovitch

[Aliyah1995]

Thanks for answering Sharon. Admittedly I don't know much about Shelly Yechimovitch other than that she is with the Labor Party (if not their leader at this point). I think she is also involved with a lot of social issues (which is a good thing). Nice to know you could at least pull one name out of your hat for someone you can still consider a straight shooter

[sharonbn]

Yechimovitch is indeed the leader (chairman) of the labor party. As of today, she is also chairman of the opposition in the knesset (leader of all parties who are not part of the gov't.)

She is known for her strong social-democratic agenda. She is an exceptional prolific law maker. Her laws concern social welfare, worker rights and support local industry. among them:

* The famous law about the right to sit in the workplace, following a case where a drugstore chain ordered the cashiers to stand all day long.
* Extending paid maternity leave to 14 weeks
* Regulating presence and work of lobbyists in the knesset
* Regulating the mandatory information to be presented in salary slips
* The establishment of central database for public transportation
* amendment to the Law of the flag stating that all Israel flags must be manufactured in Israel.
* A new law giving priority to local sewing workshops to supply army uniforms to IDF.

Yechimovitch is a member of the economic and labor committee. In that role, she is one of the most outspoken critics of the bi-annual gov't budget. She regularly exposes the budget on her website as a kind of private "free information for the public" initiative. in 2008 she published a long critique of the budget which caused extensive modifications in the final law.

in matters of security, Yechimovitch is considered moderate central-left.

[wat0n]

So Kadima is essentially going back to its origins... Kind of sad, I hope the more left-wing faction eventually merges with Labor.

Does this government still include the religious parties? What would happen with the government's stability if they quit (I hope they do, in fact I expect them to do that eventually)?

[sharonbn]

the gov't remained the same with the addition of kadima. it now consists of 96 seats out of the 120 seats in the knesset.
kadima had origins? it was the creattion of Ariel Sharon. without him, there isn't much left there...

[wat0n]

Well, Kadima was formed by the more centrist Likud members at the time. So yes, in a way they are going back to their origins.

[curlyg]

Putting aside this quite nauseating display of cynical opportunism, this may well turn out to be a positive development in a number of ways. First, Israeli politics needs consolidation - we now clearly know who the right is (Likud, Barak, Mofaz, Yvette) and who the left is (Labor, Yesh Atid, Meretz). The next thing I'd like to see is all of these self-important twits putting aside their egos and forming ONE list for the right and ONE list for the left so that we don't have 10000000 parties in the Knesset.

As to this government, I sincerely hope the religious parties leave the coalition - in fact if Mofaz had any principles he should have insisted that they leave as a condition of joining. Once they're out we'll finally have the secular coalition that Israel has desperately needed for decades (Barak-YB-Kadima-Likud) and maybe we'll finally see some movement on the secular-religious situation (conscription, a constitution, etc). Of course I doubt we will actually see any major steps under this government, they're all much too concerned with protecting their seats to open that can of worms...

[Sylvia]

We are constantly assailed by new news, and apparently we tend to forget the reasons and events that led to this move - i.e Likud-led unity government.

1. First, I must stress that the Likud is very diverse, its voters go from the left to the extreme right - something not too many people realize. The extreme right (Feiglin's and his followers) tend to infiltrate the Likud so at some point progress is slow, or non-existent. Sharon founded Kadima precisely to get rid of them. Netanyahu as party leader had reformed the central committee to get rid of them when he was Minister. Yet, in the last race for party leadership, Feiglin challenged Netanyahu and won 25% of the votes. This has gone totally unnoticed. But this meant that the within the Likud, a quarter is for the annexation of Judea an Samaria and opposes settlement demolitions, making it difficult for the Netanyahu government to carry on court decisions, not to mention to progress toward the two state solution that he has announced. The early elections were meant to once again, defeat those some call the "Feiglinim", and perhas also weaken other parties within his coalition (Lieberman, for example).

2. Mofaz -and many others in the Kadima party - has wanted to join the Netanyahu coalition from the start but Tzipi Livni was unwilling to compromise and preferred to remain in the opposition. To quote myself from another post, Tzipi hates Shas with a passion and would never sit with them in a government (she did while in the Sharon government because at the time she didn't have a say). When Kadima conducted its own primaries recently Mofaz won the leadership race and Livni left the party as a result.The obstacle to Kadima joining the coalition removed itself.

3. Another event that I haven't seen emphasized, but is in my view extremely important in Netanyahu decision to forego early elections, is a recent declaration by the Nagid (Professor Stanley Fisher) I heard on Israel radio who warned that an election at this time will have an negative impact on the economy. I thought this was rather strange, given that Stanley Fisher was a Netanyahu appointee and doesn't usually interfere in politics.

4.The solution to both problems, a unity government with Kadima rather than new elections that would weaken the extreme right and at the same time avoid an economic backlash, was, in my opinion, proposed by Mofaz.

[sharonbn]

Sylvia, you are naive. There is one reason for the formation of the unity gov't: the polls showed that Kadima would crash if elections were held now, so Mofaz wants to show some achievements to the voter.
Netnayahu? the polls show he will likely win the elections, no matter when they are held, so he has much less motivation for delaying the elections. I think he simply wants to do a full term as PM.

However, I seriously doubt that the unity gov't will be able to achieve anything meaningful for the long term. The main topics that are mentioned in the Likud-Kadima agreement are:

1) draft-for-all law, settling the issue of Israeli Arabs and ultra-orthodox not sharing the load of army/national service. and like it was mentioned here, no one wants to upset the ultra-orthodox parties, since they have long memory and will likely be courted after next elections.

2) changing the gov't system and/or election system. the goals here are to make it easier for gov't to remain for the duration of their term and the lessen the extortion power that small partied have when forming a gov't coalition. This is a good cause and certainly a lot can be done, however, there are two obstacles: one, the small parties will onject to any change for obvious reason (going back to point no.1) and two, we tried to change the system, adding direct vote for PM, and it was a total disaster and we had to revert back to the old way.

I would love to see curlyg's vision come true, but realistically I don't see it hapenning. we will tread along with what we have for a whilw until the people will get fed up once more and take to the street once more then the politicians will form a comittee once more which will have excellent recommendations once more which the politicians will not implement once more ..............

[Aliyah1995]

Sharon, why can't Curly's vision come true? Maybe there are other reasons, but why would the reasons you give be obstacles? The parties that would be against universal army/national service (with the exception of Shas) have no clout and are either not in the coalition or are so small that they won't be a threat to the coalition (remember HaBayit HaYehudi/Mafdal are in favor of universal army/national service even though they are a religious party). Regarding the small parties being an obstacle to a change in the electoral system, again they are either not in the coalition in the first place or are too small to bring down the coalition by leaving.

[sharonbn]

like I said, no one wants to be the one that the ultra-orthodox mark with a big X (see also "Shimon Peres")