Showing posts with label Finance Minister Yair Lapid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finance Minister Yair Lapid. Show all posts

Thursday, December 4, 2014

iSRAEL'S Early Elections: Who Wins, and Who Thinks They'll Win?

Early Elections: Who Wins, and Who Thinks They'll Win?

Wednesday, December 03, 2014 |  Ryan Jones   ISRAEL TODAY

It’s official. The current government in Israel is dissolving. An early election has been set for March 17, 2015. The nation is about to be plunged into yet another season of political campaigning.
The question on the minds of just about everyone is who benefits most from this move, and, equally important, who thinks they will benefit, but might be sorely mistaken?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu triggered the early election process by firing the two leading left-wing ministers in his cabinet - Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni - in hopes that going to the polls would deliver a less fractious 20th Knesset, enabling him to form a government that, in Netanyahu’s words, doesn’t include an “internal opposition.”
Surveys conducted by Channel 2 News and Channel 10 News shortly before Netanyahu’s announcement showed that most Israelis blamed the prime minister for the early elections, but that a plurality of voters would choose his Likud party in the upcoming poll.
According to both surveys, Likud will win 22 seats in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset in March, making it easily the largest party. Next would be the right-wing Jewish Home faction with 17 seats, followed by the left-wing Labor Party (13), a new right-wing party headed by former Likud heavyweight Moshe Kahlon (12), and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu faction with either 10 or 12 seats.
Lapid’s Yesh Atid party is predicted to fall from 19 to just nine seats, while Livni’s Hatnua faction will win just four mandates, barely passing the 3.25 threshold to make it into the Knesset.
If those numbers hold true, Netanyahu might get his wish of being able to form a majority coalition made up of only right-leaning parties that largely share his views on issues ranging from the peace process to economic reforms.
There is much speculation that Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett had a hand in bringing about the early election given that he and his party stand to gain the most. Jewish Home is the only party predicted to grow by more than 50 percent, and Bennett could then make a strong case for demanding the position of defense minister, putting him on track to one day take the prime minister’s chair.
Those on the left see a different outcome.
“The state of Israel isn’t stuck with Bibi anymore,” declared Labor MK Stav Shafir, referring to Netanyahu by his popular nickname.
Shafir continued by calling on left-wing voters: “This is our chance, the democratic camp in Israel led by the Labor party, to show that it is possible to do things differently. This is our time to bring the change that the public in Israel wants so badly.”
Earlier in the week, Shafir’s boss, Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog, insisted that despite the current poll numbers, he will be the next prime minister of Israel. “I think today it is clear that I present an alternative to [Netanuahu],” he told Channel 10. “I believe I’ll lead the next government.”
Further afield, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he hoped that whatever government comes next will help advance his own failed efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a failure that Kerry and the Obama Administration largely blame on Netanyahu.
Last, and certainly least, is Hamas, which tried to connect the dissolution of the Knesset to the summer’s Gaza war, even though security issues played little-to-no role in the disputes between Netanyahu, Lapid and Livni.
“The collapse of the Israeli coalition is another example of our victory and of Netanyahu’s defeat in Gaza,” declared ever-informative Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.
PHOTO: The 19th Knesset votes unanimously for its own dissolution. (Flash90)
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Monday, September 15, 2014

'Israel Might Have to Strike Iran at Any Moment'

'Israel Might Have to Strike Iran at Any Moment'

Monday, September 15, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff
In battling the political echelon for defense budget increases on Sunday, the commander of the Israel Air Force, Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel, reminded everyone that the same planes used to attack Gaza over the summer could be called upon at any moment to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“There’s no one in this room who’d be prepared to ride in a car as old as our planes,” Eshel said in remarks carried by Israel’s Channel 2 News. “Yesterday these planes were in Gaza, and tomorrow we may send them to Tehran.”
Israel’s national budget has been a source of great tension in the wake of the summer’s Gaza war.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid has vowed not to raise taxes to cover the expense of the offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu insists that in addition to covering the Gaza war, Israel needs to pour billions of additional shekels into the defense budget in order to effectively tackle a wide range of pressing security threats.
Netanyahu remains committed to preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons at any cost, and maintaining Israel’s air superiority is key to following through on that promise.
With Iran remaining defiant in its quest for an atomic bomb, Eshel’s comment was seen in local media as a hint that Israel could be preparing to strike the Islamic Republic in the very near future.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Israeli Ministers Propose Annexing, Abandoning 'West Bank'

Israeli Ministers Propose Annexing, Abandoning 'West Bank'

Tuesday, June 10, 2014 |  Ryan Jones  ISRAEL TODAY
With the collapse of the latest round of US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli ministers seem to be of one accord that the Jewish state needs to take the initiative and formulate its own outline for the future, though they disagree sharply on how to seize this opportunity.
The first to enter the fray was Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the nationalist Jewish Home faction.
Bennett proposed that Israel fully annex the portion of the so-called “West Bank” labeled as “Area C,” which is already today under full Israeli security control, and is where the bulk of the Israeli settlers live.
Under Bennett’s plan, the 70,000 Arabs who live in Area C would be granted Israeli citizenship. Areas A and B would be granted enhanced autonomy and the Palestinians living there would have their own state in all but name.
“We must recognize the truth - the Oslo era is over. After 21 years of trying one way which included unilateral withdrawals, concessions, releasing terrorists, disengagement and a unilateral separation - it’s time to admit that it does not work,” Bennett told an annual security confab in Herzliya.
“It’s time to think creatively how to build a better reality here for the citizens of Israel and for the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria,” he added. “This plan gives the Palestinians an independent government and economic prosperity while giving us, the State of Israel, sovereignty, stability, security and a maintaining of our homeland.”
Bennett’s proposal was immediately attacked by Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who insisted that if Israel annexed one inch of the West Bank, his centrist Yesh Atid faction would not hesitate to topple the government.
While Bennett and Lapid have allied on many issues, the finance minister was adamant that the way forward is not laying further claim to Judea and Samaria, but rather further abandoning those biblical territories.
Speaking at the same conference in Herzliya, Lapid advocated a return to negotiations despite the recent entry into the Palestinian government of the Hamas terrorist organization, which still calls for Israel’s destruction.
In preparation for those talks, Lapid said Israel should draw the final borders that it would like to see between the Jewish state and a future Palestinian state. Israel would then unilaterally withdraw from those areas where no Jews are today living. As a confidence-building step, Israel would later evacuate isolated Jewish settlements, and in the plan’s final stage, Israel would conduct a land swap with the Palestinian state for areas where large Jewish settlement blocs are located.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called Lapid’s proposal a non-starter that had already been proved a failure in Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
“We saw in Gaza the results of unilateral withdrawal,” said officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Anyone with political experience knows that you don’t make concessions without [getting] anything in return, especially with a government partnered with a terror organization that wants to destroy Israel.”
Netanyahu’s aides also pointed out that were Israel to draw an official map of future proposed borders, that map would then forever be the starting point for future negotiations, even if Israel later determined the boundaries were unfavorable.
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