Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting, December 2, 2018. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
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The Knesset officially approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment as defense minister on Monday evening.
Opposition MKs spoke out against Netanyahu for nearly three hours.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said that before voting on the matter, lawmakers should examine Netanyahu’s first month on the job.
“He finished off our deterrence in Gaza, [Hamas Gaza chief] Yihya Sinwar is giving victory speeches in the streets,” Lapid began. “There’s a wave of terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. In the North, he held press conferences…but the idea should be to calm things down not to heat it up, and to make it clear the enemy is Hezbollah and not all of Lebanon. Yesterday, half of his cabinet protested against his policies. That’s after a month on the job. Israel can’t allow itself for him to stay.”
“The problem,” opposition leader Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union) said, is “Netanyahu’s personal and political weakness. Once, he was promising in the area of security. He wrote a book on how to fight terror…He told the citizens of Israel ‘I know how to defeat Hamas.’ But then the promises disappeared, and reality came.”
Water and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz came to Netanyahu’s defense, saying “we need to recognize the reality in the Middle East. We are fighting for our existence, combatting terror…and still, the challenges are ahead of us, not behind us.”
The defense portfolio opened up when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman resigned last month, and Netanyahu automatically retained it, as happens to the prime minister when any minister resigns. However, the automatic situation would have lasted for only three months, which is why the vote was needed.
Netanyahu also retains the foreign portfolio, to which he plans to appoint someone next month, the Immigration Absorption Ministry, which he said he would give someone else this week, and the Health Ministry, which is effectively controlled by Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman.
On Sunday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked abstained from the cabinet vote to approve Netanyahu as defense minister, arguing that someone should have the position full-time.
When the Defense Ministry became available, Bennett said his Bayit Yehudi party would leave the coalition if he was not appointed to head it. However, he backed down from his demand within a few days.
The Likud slammed Bennett for being self-serving, while Bayit Yehudi said Netanyahu is not doing enough to fight terror. Still, Bennett and Shaked voted in favor of Netanyahu in the Knesset.
In the speeches before Monday’s vote, opposition whip MK Yoel Hasson (Zionist Union) said that “Bennett and Shaked don’t trust Netanyahu as Mr. Security.”
“Iran is growing stronger in Syria, it’s a fact,” Hasson said. “Mr. Security claims he understands security…He is willing to throw the warnings of the Shin Bet chief in the trash…For what? For his childish game against Bennett over who is more right-wing.”
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