On Monday morning, Religious Zionism Chairman Bezalel Smotrich challenged Interior Minister and former political ally Ayelet Shaked (Yamina) to a duel of sorts: “Yamina claims that Religious Zionism is running a false campaign regarding the Electricity Law. I think otherwise, but I’m ready to have a fair public debate. Ayelet, choose the platform and the interviewer. Let us discuss respectfully the details of the law before the face of the nation.”
ימינה טוענים שהציונות הדתית מנהלת קמפיין שקרי לגבי חוק החשמל.
אני חושב אחרת.
אבל אני מוכן לויכוח פומבי הגון.
איילת, תבחרי את את הפלטפורמה ואת המראיין.
בואי נדון באופן מכבד בפרטי החוק אל מול פני האומה.
— בצלאל סמוטריץ’ (@bezalelsm)
According to recent reports, Interior Minister Shaked and Knesset Interior Committee Waleed Taha last week reached an agreement in the stalemate over two concurrent bills: one, the Electricity bill that would permit the connection of thousands of illegal Bedouin structures to the national grid; and the other, the Harish bill, to extend by three years the special planning and building committee on the expansion of the city of Harish, near Haifa, from its current population of some 15,000 to 100,000.
On November 17, Taha’s party, Ra’am, voted against the Harish bill to deliver a message to their Jewish coalition partners: you keep our illegal Bedouin homes without power, we won’t let you build your legal city.
There was another point Ra’am was making, as MK Osama Saadi put it: “The Harish bill will expropriate thousands of acres from the Arab communities in the area. Of course, we oppose it.”
The Harish bill was passed without the Arabs, but the message was stinging, and Shaked has since been eager to settle the dispute with her Arab partners. The biggest item has to do with the Interior Minister’s authority to approve individual connections to the grid. Ra’am insisted this authority would be stripped, Shaked said no way, and they reached a compromise whereby the minister would have to approve or disallow a connection within two months from the submission of a request – half the original 4-month period.
MK Smotrich presented this as yet another capitulation of Shaked to the Arabs, another win for Taha. “Such short schedules do not allow for the discretion of the interior minister and if she does not automatically approve them, the High Court would compel her,” he argued. “Formally, it’s within her authority, but in practice it’s meaningless.”
He then added a punch: “Unfortunately, this is already a method with her. Shaked focuses on PR exercises and the supporters of terrorism laugh all the way to the bank and to the destruction of Zionism.”
MK Shlomo Karhi (Likud) warned that “if these two laws come up tomorrow (Monday) in the Interior Committee, with the courtesy of Walid Taha, it means that once again the government and Shaked have fully folded and sold out the Negev.”
Well, it did, and they probably have.
Both Smotrich and Karhi are on the money – Taha has proven himself to be a ruthless parliamentarian with no concerns about maintaining a proper public façade. A week ago, Taha, the chairman of the Ra’am faction in the Knesset as well as the Interior committee, declared a boycott on all the Knesset votes, in protest of the clash between himself and Shaked. He left the Knesset in a huff and drove home to Kafr Qassem, where he wouldn’t pick up the phone to answer calls from his coalition partners. Later in the week, he canceled all his committee meetings and held the Harish City Development Law hostage until he received a guarantee for the Electricity bill. Indeed, now that the barriers to the Electricity bill’s approval appear to have been removed, the law promoting the new Jewish city of Harish will also be debated in Taha’s committee.
In short, if Smotrich is selling tickets to his public debate with Shaked, I’d like to reserve the front row.
