MK Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) recently approached Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s office and suggested that he walk away from the Lapid-Benett coalition disband the right-left government, Kan 11 reported Wednesday night.
In his appeal, Litzman undertook to be a guarantor of the move, thus also criticizing the breach of MK Aryeh Deri’s commitment to the previous rotation government of Netanyahu and Gantz. The message conveyed by Litzman was: “I am ready to pledge that if Gantz comes over, I would be the guarantor of the implementation of the agreement. Last time they turned down my offer to be the guarantor and chose other people. My word is a word.”
Gantz was supposed to take over as prime minister on Wednesday, had the previous government not fallen over his suspicion that PM Netanyahu had no intention of keeping their deal. The defense minister responded to Litzman’s proposal mostly with humor, perhaps the bitter kind, knowing full well that the problem in the previous coalition was not Aryeh Deri…
Meanwhile, after the Knesset has gone half a year without an ethics committee because of the opposition’s objection, Knesset Speaker MK Miki Levy announced Wednesday night that he had submitted unilaterally the letters of appointment for the establishment of a Knesset ethics committee. The four-member committee (2 from each side of the aisle) will be chaired by MK Yoray Lahav Hertzanu (Yesh Atid) and the other coalition representative is MK Zvi Hauser (New Hope). The speaker appointed two opposition MK without their knowledge: MK Gila Gamliel (Likud) and MK Yakov Margi (Shas). Margi announced his resignation shortly thereafter. However, the opposition leaders are going to meet to debate this issue, seeing as if the right-wing parties reject the speaker’s choices, they risk having two Joint Arab List MKs in the committee.
And you thought politics was boring and predictable…