Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett on Sunday demanded that Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu implement at once the coalition agreement between their respective parties to establish a ministerial committee to discuss the application of the Edmund Levi committee’s recommendations. The Levi report recommended imposing Israeli law in the Jewish areas of Judea and Samaria. The move will effectively take away from Defense Minister Ya’alon the power to make decisions of the kind he did last Friday, in removing 20 Jewish families from their legally purchased homes less than 24 hours after they had entered.
Prior to the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu informed the Likud ministers’ meeting that vetting the purchase documentation of the Hebron homes should take no longer than two weeks, and that should the process not be done by that time, the subject would be brought for discussion at the cabinet meeting. The Likud ministers’ meeting was rife with attacks against the defense minister, as ministers Ze’ev Elkin and Yariv Levin accused him of creating an injustice that “cries to high heaven.”
At the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu reiterated that “the government has always supported the settlement endeavor, especially nowadays when it is under a terror attack, facing these attacks with courage and determination. At the same breath, we are a state of laws and must honor the rule of law. As soon as the purchase procedures are confirmed, we will enable the populating both Hebron homes, as has been the case on several occasions in the past. The vetting process starts today, we’ll run it as fast as possible, and, in any event, if it isn’t done in one week, I’ll make sure there will be a status report for the cabinet.”
Netanyahu is facing a split within his own Likud party over the defense minister’s harsh treatment of settlers, while at the same time turning a blind eye to code violations and illegal construction by Arabs in the same areas. There have been threats by several MKs to skip votes on coalition bills, but so far Coalition whip Tzachi Hanegbi is not worried — the next big issue bill due for a Knesset vote is Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s much touted “transparency law” to force NGOs to reveal their foreign funding sources — and what right-wing MK would miss that one?