The Islamic Ra’am party led by Mansour Abbas on Monday helped the opposition bloc led by Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid gain control of the key Knesset Arrangements Committee.
Arrangement Committee Chairman Mickey Zohar (Likud), who will keep his post as long as the mandate to form the government is Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands, discovered that he did not have a majority to approve committee picks of the deputy Knesset speakers, as well as the composition of the various committees and dispersed the committee meeting.
Since the Likud does not have a majority in this key committee, the question now is whether Zohar will prevent its convening in order to block anti-Netanyahu moves. Refusing to convene the committee means paralysis of the work of the Knesset. The Organizing Committee is the body authorized to establish the temporary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Finance Committee – the only two committees that must continue to function even in the interim period until the formation of a coalition government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believed his Likud bloc would succeed in passing its proposed makeup of the committee, instead was handed a major defeat when four Ra’am Knesset members entered the plenum at the last moment for the second reading, and voted against Likud.
Religious Zionism party chairman Bezalel Smotrich, who had opposed any coalition agreement with Ra’am, retweeted a comment from fellow party member Orit Strook following the vote that the move by Ra’am underscored why a future right-wing government could not count on support from the Islamist party. “The truth is, we’re lucky this happened now,” Smotrich added to the tweet, and “not in the middle of a [military] operation in Gaza.”
מ.ש.ל.
והאמת, מזל שזה קרה עכשיו וכולנו נתפכח ולא באמצע מבצע בעזה. https://t.co/YqdtsqxEQD
— בצלאל סמוטריץ’ (@bezalelsm)
The Arrangements Committee is the first Knesset panel to be formed after an election and is given control over the entire legislative agenda, as well as deciding which other parliamentary committees are formed and who will be assigned to them, until a new government is formed.
Lapid allegedly promised Abbas that the Ra’am party would be given a seat on the Knesset Finance Committee, and would head a committee to reduce violence in the Arab sector, as well as promising him personally the role of deputy Knesset Speaker, according to Israeli media reports.
The two men met earlier in the day to discuss cooperation on future Knesset activities as well as working together to wrest control over the Arrangements Committee away from the Likud, according to the i24TV news outlet.