Netanyahu Struggles To Keep Coalition Together
As Kadima MK Yohanan Plesner announced on Wednesday the recommendations of the committee he headed which examined alternatives for mandatory military or civilian service for ultra-Orthodox men and Israeli Arabs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambled to find a formula that would keep his coalition together.
Netanyahu does not want Kadima to leave the coalition. Party chairman Shaul Mofaz doesn’t want that either. Both have an interest in continuing to move forward, together.
If Mofaz had wanted to quit he would have done so Wednesday rather than issuing a polite and general ultimatum, threatening to quit unless the Plesner Committee’s recommendations are adopted. In order to justify remaining in the government, Mofaz needs a significant accomplishment, durable goods that he can show his skeptical Knesset cohort, which is fragmenting into groups and factions.
Kadima’s Knesset members will start holding negotiations soon, directly and using envoys and middlemen. For now, Netanyahu looks more worried: If Kadima leaves over the Plesner Committee, Netanyahu will come off as having given in to the ultra-Orthodox on an issue about which there is an overwhelming consensus: universal service, equal distribution of the national burden.
But if Mofaz is forced to leave the coalition he will at least have an agenda, something to run with into the next election. Something that Kadima searched for during its three and a half futile years of wandering in the desert of the opposition.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
