Inside Israel Today: Decision Day in Israeli Politics

you're listening to inside Israel today with Bill Hoffman on the land of Israel Network hello and welcome to inside Israel today on the land of israel Network on the land of israel comm where we are in the middle of the most confusing and strange political crisis israel has possibly ever had now we went to elections on April 9th the Prime Minister won a convincing victory he had six weeks to form a government it ends on Wednesday I'm taping this on Tuesday and we have absolutely no idea whether he will succeed you were probably listening to this on Wednesday maybe a solution has been reached by now and you are all smarter than me or maybe when you're listening to this you're hoping that I tape this when I know what's going on I'm sorry I don't no one does at the moment I want to take you back to another hot political crisis I had just came back from a speaking tour in May of 2012 and I thought this is a good time to go to the Knesset and after all the Knesset er was voting to disperse itself and to initiate an election and so I went straight from the airport to the Knesset at 10 o'clock at night and sure enough a couple hours later people started asking where is Showell mofos the leader of the opposition and it turned out that he was at Netanyahu's building the largest coalition that Israel had had in 28 years behind everyone's back when the Knesset members were voting to disperse itself really a government was being built and I'm glad that I happened to be there that night where everything changed in the middle of the night and I was the only one who was well rested because I sleep well on planes and for everybody else it was the middle of the night but for me with jetlag everything it was no big deal at all and poor Lahav who had been covering while I was on the speaking tour the Knesset as it was work working on disbanding itself for a couple weeks and finally could relax and go to bed went to sleep thinking that there would be an election and I woke up thinking and all the work she did the previous two weeks were all irrelevant and down the drain and Gila comes back it's off a plane he's there for all the history and all the action as it happens in the middle of the night well it feels like a little deja vu because right now at the Knesset the Knesset members are going through all kinds of processes to initiate an early election and a repeat election well it's clear that things are happening not of the Knesset in order to prevent that from happening for instance right now as we speak there's a meeting going on between a victor Lieberman and one of the most important ultra-orthodox operatives in the world his name is Yankee Kenny F ski okay Yankee can Jeff ski is responsible for motion Lyon getting pretty much all the votes that he got in the first round of voting for mayor of Jerusalem which was what allowed him to make the second round the runoff for mayor of Jerusalem now where he defeated over bercovich and so the power of Yankee who is the grandson of the spiritual mentor of the Degel hatorah party cannot be underestimated in the very fact that Lieberman has agreed to meet with him after he hasn't even had a serious meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel and way too long shows that maybe in the end there will be a compromise reached where there's a will there's a way and right now they're just too many interests in not going to elections there is the interest of the public who would save according to a finance ministry official 475 mm in shekels plus the other 5mm they talk about it but five billion shekels so that they if they have a day off from work in this country I think that some of that is recouped by the spending that there isn't a deal from work we're talking tons and tons of money all the money they would go to the same political strategist that worked before some of whom work live abroad so all the money that goes and campaign fundraising is given to the various parties and then all we do is come back with likely a very similar Knesset maybe with the bottom people only could falling off the list because we could as we speak has a meeting where they are apparently merging with the colano party of Moshe Coughlin but then again I'm taping this at four o'clock on Tuesday and you're listening to this on Wednesday and between now and then anything can happen now somebody asked me has this ever happened before in Israel didn't something similar happen with Tzipi Livni no after woodall Mert quit because of his corruption charges at a stage that Netanyahu passed a year and a half ago where the police recommended recommending charges against him then the president gave he is number two in the party Tzipi Livni a chance to form a government and she failed because the ultra-orthodox made demands that she wasn't willing to give in to and she decided to initiate an election instead and that election was won by Netanyahu sort of she still got one more seat then Lee could but the liquids block was much larger and President Shimon Peres at the time even though he came from the party of TIF he lived me and did not like Netanyahu had no choice but to ask Netanyahu to form a government that's the closest that's come there also was what was called the stinking maneuver where in 1990 shimon peres thought he had successfully formed a coalition to break up the national unity government that he had with the Likud's its hoc Shamir but then there were a couple ultra-orthodox Knesset members who disappeared all of a sudden and weren't there to vote for him one was hiding in a cave ladies and gentlemen literally hiding in a cave and that was why Paris could not form his government and in the end Shamir ended up forming one without him so no nothing close to what we have now of a candidate winning an election and then not succeeding in forming a government during the six weeks allotted to him by law so where is there a precedent well in Britain in according to the Israel democracy Institute in Britain in 1974 two elections were held in February and October in Ireland in 1982 two elections were held in February and November in Greece in 1989 two elections were held in June and November in Greece in 2012 two elections were held in May and June poor Greeks and in Spain elections were held in December 2015 and another election in June 2016 so it does happen around the world ladies and gentlemen now a lot of people are asking why doesn't Netanyahu form a coalition with the 60 Knesset members that he has and the answer is is that he won't be able to accomplish anything if he did they would have to if there are 60 might be okay if you have Knesset members on the other side who are abstaining but right now it would be 60 versus 60 and that's not gonna work so also that there Netanyahu wants to change basic laws in this country the bills are the four that are the forerunner to a constitution that may never get written those bills require 61 Knesset members out of 120 to pass there are minority governments around the world or have been that are common in democracies such as Canada Denmark Sweden and Spain and says the Israel democracy Institute today minority governments are serving in Ireland in the United Kingdom Denmark Norway Spain and Sweden but we've only had a minority government in Israel after parties have fallen out of the government for instance in its Hawker beans government after Shas left the government in the old Barack's government after Merritt's quit the government so never have we had a minority government formed at the beginning it's certainly not what any Prime Minister would want to do and so what we have ladies and gentlemen is a mess and it's up to the politicians to forgo their egos on behalf of the people and avoid that mess and if they do then sometime over and sometime by Wednesday night Netanyahu would tell the president that he has succeeded in forming government all he has to do is send that message to him he has by Monday night to submit the coalition agreements that would be voted on by next Wednesday and then he can actually start governing then yes can work on passing bills on diplomacy there's a conference in Bahrain on the 25th of June coming up where the Trump plan will begin to be implemented with this conference that will focus on improving the benefits for the Palestinians and there would then be an attempt to implement this Trump plan which would perhaps be unveiled shortly around that time if we go to an election then there isn't going to be a Trump plan perhaps because Israel will be busy until the election would be held on the 17th of September and then the American elections are heating up around then and that's when the White House really focuses on its own internal issues now there is still a small very small chance that somebody else could form a government let's say that Netanyahu fails to build a coalition and he also fails to pass a bill initiating an election well then time will run out and then the ball will be given back to the president who can then have consultations and who can form a government now earlier on he concluded that Athena was the only person who could form a government not been against the leader of the balloon white party but things have a habit of changing if Netanyahu can't form a government and if some members of Knesset from is Likud who don't want to lose their jobs and the betraying the Likud at the last minute and not joining the effort to disperse the Knesset if they decide to stick around maybe you'll have enough Knesset members firmly could would be willing to join been against in his blue and white party along with colano even if it's merging somehow with liquid today even with Lieberman and maybe an ultra-orthodox party Shas even though there's not a lot of good relations between shots and the I repeat number two and blue and white and then maybe they could somehow form a government led by blue and white it is not easy but it is a technical possibility still the most likely scenario is that Netanyahu is our prime minister will be our prime minister and perhaps forever will be our permanent one never knows you want to be talking more about what's going on here after the break hello I'm Gil Hoffman host of inside Israel today and I'm honored to be taking part in the shadow of a lifetime at the Mount Zion hotel come join yours truly and other show hosts here such as re Abramowitz Jeremy Gimpel Yves Harrow Yishai Fleischer talking about Torah and inspiration what will I be talking about you'll just have to come out to the Mount Zion hotel to gloat of a lifetime Thursday through Monday June sixth through tenth 2019 for more information visit the land of israel dodge travel that's the land of israel dodge travel [Music] and we're back ladies and gentlemen here on inside Israel today on the Land of Israel network on the Land of Israel com where we call ourselves a radio station sometimes and not just a podcast perhaps it's the vestige of the voice of Israel radio network may God bless its memory that was sort of a radio station even though it was online and one of the detriments to us not really being a radio station is that I don't have callers calling me in right now to ask questions I would love to take questions from callers right now though I have a caller who was a producer sitting next to me over here and he's been asking very good questions so first of all he asked our Naftali Bennett and the yellowjacket still ministers the answer is absolutely yes if we go to an election they will continue to be ministers until new ministers are sworn in we go to an election on September 17th and there's going to be six weeks for somebody to form a government we're just taking us to the very end of October and that means that the minister who of Education he'll be greeting students as they arrive for the first day of school will be enough Tully Bennett and a yellow chick ed will still be there trying to change the judicial system and reform it and she'll still be the minister who heads the Ministerial Committee on legislation pretty much decides what bills pass and Michael Oren it's not been a member of Knesset since he left but he is still technically the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's office in charge of international diplomacy even though he quit his cool on who party even though he doesn't even have a party and neither does the electric head right now so that is still very much in the open the caller sitting next to me asks about the number of Ministers allowed well yesterday Monday the cabinet was supposed to bring to the Knesset a vote on expanding the cabinet there is a bill that would negate the previous bill that limited the number of ministers to 18 last time in the last government in 2015 they passed what was called in Hebrew a hotshot a temporary change just for one term that allowed there to be more ministers and now this bill which is ready for its final readings to pass into law would allow Netanyahu basically to a point as many ministers as he wants not just 18 not just the 26 that were the most likely he can appoint a Google ministers that's right Google is still the largest number and not just a website that makes a lot of money so Netanyahu needs to change the law in order to appoint 26 ministers by next Wednesday and it is still very much doable if elections are not happening but yesterday they did not pass this bill because they were too busy working on dispersing the Knesset no I feel so bad for some of these Knesset members who just got elected especially the ones in Likud you've got people there that they just got elected they there now are voting to lose their own jobs some of them left good jobs or to run for Knesset there's a woman named Oh snot mark who joined the previous Knesset at the last minute and barely got to do anything and then we went to elections and then she got reelected and she's in the new Knesset and hasn't gotten to do anything yet other than vote for her own job to be lost and now she sees Netanyahu make a deal with [ __ ] alone that could give up her seat in the Knesset in with in favor of one of the Knesset members in kula no she was quoted saying outside this meeting where the merger was supposed to be taking place why should I give up my seat for you fat Shasha be tone who is she anyway who is he fat Shasha be tone ephod Shasha be tone is our minister of housing ladies and gentlemen well what do you mean you don't know who she is Oh snot mark she is a minister who was raised in Kiryat Shmona and is the top woman left in the Kulin who party is a very impressive person she got the housing ministry job when Yoav gallon deflected for affected from coolin Oh Thule could where he was then given the job of immigrant absorption minister in a place of soulful and ver who was fired when you smell potato left the government does not not read the paper it doesn't none remember all these exciting developments that have taken place in Israeli politics to not know you fought Shasha Beto so I think if I'm the Knesset if I'm Lily could I would perhaps draw up a new list that hasn't all the Knesset members in lis could right now plus the ones from cool ah no they're only four anyway from cool on oh just take out Oh snot mark because of snot mark is a bad luck charm every time she is there the elections are initiated apparently the Knesset cannot tolerate having go snot mark in its midst now we're also gonna wait and see is there going to be any tension inside the blue and white party after all they made it through one election and can they make it through to in their party they have a rotation for prime minister that means the first two and a half years we're supposed to be been against as prime minister in the final two years were supposed to be I repeat I started causing trouble they're asking Knesset members you know Gans needs to move out of the way of Lapita now a rotation is a rotation as a rotation its lipids turn and I don't expect them to make any changes in the end then again could very well not be an election anyway which makes all kinds of questions and well where will there be an election there will be an election ladies and gentlemen for leader of the Labour Party that's right the Labour Party which has had eight elections for leader of the party since 2001 hasn't had an election since July of 2017 come on now you've led a V gap I lead this party now for almost two years he led the party to six seats in the Knesset by far the least that the Labour Party ever got only a quarter of the votes that they got in 24 when they ran were together at Tzipi Livni 2015 and after God by one only succeeds the honorable thing to do would have been to quit he did not quit he is still there and he has not said firmly that he's not running again for a leader of the Labour Party if they move up elections then maybe he'd have even more reason to stay cuz nobody else would be ready then again if I'm away we're party ID it would take somebody knew that something that nobody knows anything about you've got a former IDF deputy chief of staff named vir Golan who intends to run the number two guy in labor it sexually or was number two because they saved the seat for another former general tal Russo and then shmuly who won the number two seat was moved to number three on the list he got a huge number of votes in the primary shmuly he's definitely popular within the labour party and we'll see how popular he is in the general public he's seen as a socio-economic activist who is a very good worker in the in the parliament passed a lot of bills even though he was in the opposition that helped ordinary people who are from disadvantaged sectors maybe he will become the leader of the Labour Party you never know or maybe there'll be somebody who sweeps the party off their feet who I haven't even heard of yet you never know so look we don't know as we're sitting here and whether there's going to be an election for Prime Minister and for the Knesset we don't know if the blue and white party is going to stay together we know that the Labour Party will always fight and always self-destruct that is the one thing I know as I'm sitting here taping this wonderful show inside Israel today perhaps inside Israel tomorrow we'll all know a lot more thank you for meeting with us and I'm looking forward to being with you again next week when we will all be so much wiser please have you ever had cheveux a new Shalom or has it been many years since you've met some would initially forget everything if you can if you have the means look a ticket come to Jerusalem for sure look it's so worth it it's so powerful and we're calling it you vote of a lifetime you won't regret it if you if this is the one come out come out for an awesome chef vote together check out a website the Land of Israel doctrine