Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting privately on Friday at 2 PM to discuss the terms of Yisrael Beyteinu’s entry into the coalition.
Liberman is adamantly insisting on receiving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but Netanyahu wants Liberman to step back and take something else.
As JewishPress.com reported, Bennett is reportedly agreeing to not demand the Foreign Ministry if Liberman doesn’t get it either.
Sources in the Likud claim that Liberman is threatening to resign from the Knesset if he doesn’t receive the Foreign Minister’s position again, though a spokesman for Foreign Minister Liberman denied this, according to an NRG report.
One of the other sticking points are the possible deals Netanyahu made with the Hareidi parties to get them to join the coalition.
Liberman’s party is afraid that Netanyahu may have agreed to roll back all the progress made on the draft and conversion issues in the previous government, in order to acquire Hareidi support.
It is suspected that Netanyahu wants to reach agreements with all his other partners first, saving Liberman for last. At that point he would play the Zionist Union off against Yisrael Beyteinu.
Of course, in politics anything can happen. Netanyahu could possibly reach a final agreement with Liberman today before most of the other parties. Which is what he did with Tzipi Livni in the previous coalition, when he gave her the Justice Ministry and head of negotiations with the PA and she joined the coalition first, which shocked all the other parties.