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After defeat in key vote, Likud whip concedes Netanyahu won’t form government

Times of Israel Staff — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 23:44:31 +0000

In inaugural session of Arrangements Committee, Miki Zohar says Likud leader will lead right-wing parties into opposition.

Screen capture from video of Likud MK Miki Zohar chairing a meeting of the Knesset Arrangements Committee, April 19, 2021. (Knesset Channel)

Hours after his Likud party suffered a stinging surprise defeat in a Knesset vote on forming a key committee, the party’s faction chief, MK Miki Zohar, said that the party now realizes that it will be heading into the opposition, rather than forming a government.

As he chaired a first meeting of the Arrangements Committee, Zohar said, “We understand and internalize that we are on the way to the opposition.”

“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will lead the opposition,” he said. “We will go with our heads held high.”

Directing his remarks at opposition lawmakers, Zohar added, “Believe me, you won’t have an easy time with us.”

MK Ze’ev Elkin, a former confidant of Netanyahu who nonetheless left the party ahead of the March elections to join the rival New Hope, which is committed to replacing the prime minister, responded by questioning whether Netanyahu was of the same opinion as Zohar.

“It is interesting to know what they will say at Balfour,” he tweeted, referring to the Jerusalem street where the prime minister’s official residence is located. “It seems to me that this will not be Miki Zohar’s day.”

Some Likud figures have suggested to Netanyahu that he already tell President Reuven Rivlin he is giving up efforts to form a coalition, despite having another 15 days to complete the task, Channel 12 reported.

It was during a Knesset vote earlier in the evening on forming the Arrangements Committee that the ruling Likud suffered defeat after its proposal for the makeup of the committee was rejected in favor of a counter-proposal from the anti-Netanyahu bloc of parties.

As a result, though Zohar chairs the committee, the bloc of parties seeking to replace Netanyahu has more seats than those allied with the prime minister.

The Arrangements Committee, the first Knesset committee to be formed after an election, controls the legislative agenda in the new parliament until a new government is formed. This includes determining what other parliamentary committees will be formed and who will serve on them. With an ongoing political deadlock complicating the formation of a coalition, the influence of the Arrangements Committee could be amplified.

Immediately after the vote to approve its formation, the committee set to work, though it quickly ran into a dispute, as Zohar refused to bring to a vote proposals coming from the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

Zohar also suffered a setback when his suggestion that there be two deputy Knesset speakers was voted down.

Likud’s defeat on building the Arrangements Committee came after Ra’am, an Arab Islamist party, voted against its proposal and backed the alternative, suggested by MK Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party.

Ra’am’s cooperation with Lapid came after the party had been courting both Knesset blocs during negotiations to form a government. Netanyahu is hoping to build a government based on outside support from Ra’am, but the idea has been rejected outright by the far-right Religious Zionism party, which has repeatedly said it will not stay in a coalition that relies on cooperation with Arab Israeli parties.

To form a majority in the Knesset, Netanyahu would need to have Religious Zionism and the right-wing Yamina party on board, as well as outside support from Ra’am.

In the wake of Ra’am voting to stop the Likud proposal, Religious Zionism lawmakers remarked that it further strengthened their view that a government cannot in any way be dependent on Ra’am, even for outside support.

Yamina chief Naftali Bennett, who wants to be prime minister himself, has not yet committed to either the pro- or anti-Netanyahu blocs, but has vowed to do everything he can to prevent a fifth round of elections, following four inconclusive votes in the past two years.

With Ra’am openly cooperating with the opposition on such a significant development and said to have received assurances from Lapid that it will be given key legislative positions if he is given the chance to form a government, Netanyahu’s hopes of cobbling together a coalition appeared to be fading.

If Netanyahu fails to form a government or returns his mandate to do so, Rivlin can offer the mandate to Lapid, who is next in line in terms of the number of MKs who recommended him for the task, or ask the Knesset to choose another lawmaker.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-defeat-in-key-vote-likud-whip-concedes-netanyahu-wont-form-government/

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US envoy to Israel: Evangelical Christians firmer Israel backers than many Jews

Times of Israel — Sat, 19 May 2018 04:46:55 +0000

As David Friedman hails their ‘fervor and devotion’ in NY Times interview, his counterpart Ron Dermer calls devout Christians the ‘backbone’ of US support for Israel.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Pastor John Hagee, May 11, 2018. (CUFI)

The US Ambassador to Israel said evangelical Christians are more passionate supporters of Israel than many Jews.

Speaking to the New York Times about the prominent involvement of Christian supporters of Israel at the Monday inauguration of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, over which he presided, Friedman said evangelical Christians “support Israel with much greater fervor and devotion than many in the Jewish community.”

He backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliances with leaders of the evangelical community by stressing, “You’re running a country, you need friends, you need alliances, you need to protect your people.”

Friedman acknowledged that he personally invited John Hagee, who gave the closing benediction at the event, and pastor Robert Jeffress, who gave the opening address.

In the article published Saturday, Friedman called them “two of the most followed leaders of the evangelical community,” and said he “wanted to honor the community for having been so constructive in helping to move this along.”

In his address Monday, Jeffress praised “the tremendous leadership of our great president, Donald J. Trump,” and also invoked the “prince of peace, Jesus our lord.”

A Southern Baptist who vigorously supported Trump during the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign and was a member of his evangelical advisory board, Jeffress once warned that Jewish people are going to hell and said Hitler was part of God’s plan to return Jews to Israel. Criticism of his selection to speak at the ceremony was led by former president candidate Mitt Romney, who called Jeffress a “religious bigot.”

Pastor John Hagee, head of Christians United for Israel, at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City on May 11, 2018. (courtesy CUFI)

Echoing some of his counterpart’s praise for the evangelical Christian community, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States told the paper that “devout Christians” had become the “backbone” of US support for Israel. “It’s got to be a solid quarter of the population, and that is maybe 10, 15, 20 times the Jewish population,” Dermer said.

He insisted, nonetheless, that the Israeli government was determined to maintain wide, bipartisan US and US Jewish support for Israel. “You could say there’s a shift here or there, but obviously for us, it’s important that we have strong support that’s very broad and bipartisan,” Dermer said. “You can’t fly a plane with one wing.”

Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid leads a faction meeting in the Israeli parliament on April 30, 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party and a key opposition rival of Netanyahu, warned on Thursday that Netanyahu was “dangerously” aligning his government with conservative, evangelical factions of the Republican Party, and furthering the divide with Democrats.

“The fact that the government completely identifies with the conservative, evangelical faction of the Republican Party is dangerous,” Lapid said.

He added that if there were a Democratic US president and Congress in 2020, it would spell a “serious problem” for Israel if Netanyahu were to remain in power.

Lapid said Jewish Democratic lawmaker Ted Deutch told him he was blackballed from attending the US embassy inauguration in Jerusalem on Monday. No Democratic lawmakers were known to be present at the event.

The New York Times piece, headlined “Israel and Evangelicals: New US Embassy Signals a Growing Alliance,” said the dedication of the embassy marked “the most public recognition yet of the growing importance the Netanyahu government now assigns to its conservative Christian allies, even if some have been accused of making anti-Semitic statements.”

It said this represented “a historic and strategic shift, relying on the much larger base of evangelical Christians, even at the risk of turning off American Jews who may be troubled by some evangelicals’ denigration of their faith.”

“The paradox is well known,” the paper observed. “The beliefs of many evangelical Christians that Israel is special to God — and, for some, a marker in apocalyptic prophecies — lead many to hawkish support of the Jewish state while they simultaneously insist that salvation awaits only those who accept Jesus as their savior.

As a consequence of the increasingly warm ties between the Israeli right and the Christian right a “polarization” is accelerating — “turning support for Israel into a partisan question in Washington.”

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-to-israel-evangelical-christians-firmer-israel-backers-than-many-jews/

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