Several Israeli media outlets have been citing Likud sources who’ve been suggesting that Justice Minister Gideon Saar – also chairman of New Hope and former prominent member of Likud – has softened his position against a Netanyahu-led government, especially since all the polls are showing his party either dropping from its current 6 Knesset seats to 4, or disappearing altogether below the 3.25% vote threshold.
According to those reports, Saar has been in contact behind the scenes with Yaakov Atrakchi, the CEO of Aura Israel – Entrepreneurship and Investments Ltd., the man who conducted all of Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition negotiations in recent years. The same reports suggest that another prominent Likud member who landed in New Hope, Housing Minister Zeev Elkin, is also involved in those talks.
If those reports are right, and Saar is looking for a way to jump ship with his honor intact, his rope, ladder, whatever people jump ships with nowadays, could turn out to be the vote on extending the Emergency Regulations – Judea and Samaria, Jurisdiction and Legal Assistance Act, a set of regulations that apply Israeli law to Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, an area that, according to Israeli law (under every government), is an administered territory and not part of sovereign Israel.
These regulations were first enacted in 1967, and the government extends them every few years. They are due to expire at the end of June, and Minister Saar wants to extend them but doesn’t have the votes. Inside the coalition, the Raam and Meretz MKs won’t support it, while Likud and Religious Zionism, the opposition right-wing factions, who by rights should be taking care of the settlers, have announced that they intend to vote against any bill initiated by the coalition.
Without those regulations, the settlements will be cut off from Israel, the Israeli legal enclave in the territories will disappear, and the settlers will be subject to the legal system of the IDF’s Civil Administration.
The settlers will lose the rights reserved for them as Israeli citizens: the right to state health insurance, the National Insurance Law, the Entry into Israel Law, the Population Registry Law, the Child Adoption Law – you name it, the good people of Gush Etzion and Karnei Shomron will lose it.
Without regulations, the powers of other Israeli entities regarding Israelis living in Area C would also expire, including the Tax Authority, the Center for the Collection of Fines, and the Execution Authorities. The police, too, won’t be authorized to investigate in Area C crimes committed in Israel, and Judea and Samaria could become a legal haven for runaway Israeli criminals.
In a Reshet Bet radio interview Monday, Saar threatened to dissolve the coalition if the law were not passed next week. “Next week there will be a test of whether or not the coalition wants to exist. This vote will show,” Saar said. He stressed that opposition to the law by coalition members constitutes their opposition to the existence of the government: “The government has a responsibility to pass basic legal arrangements like this law, I made that clear to the party leaders. A coalition member who opposes it says, in effect, I do not want the government to exist.”
Delicious…
So, Saar has been blaming his coalition partners for this nightmare scenario, but he may be protesting too much, and in reality, is planning to use the bill’s failure in the plenum as his life raft: he cannot in good conscious allow the situation in the liberated territories to deteriorate, and so, true patriot that he is, he and Elkin and the rest of the former Likudniks are packing their suitcases and returning to a Netanyahu coalition government.
Of course, there is the alternative theory that Sa’ar is simply using these negotiations to scare the Arab and leftwing coalition partners into submission.
According to Kipa, Saar has been promised the foreign ministry, but Likud demands to keep the justice ministry. Maybe they want to keep it for another jumper, Ayelet Shaked, for whom the justice ministry is her ultimate desire – and since, according to the current coalition agreement, she’s guaranteed that office after Lapid becomes prime minister, it’s the least Likud can offer her for stepping in the dingy.
Both political parties have denied the reports of negotiations are true. Reporter Amit Segal mentioned the old joke as to how you know when a report is accurate? When both politicians deny it.
