Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to appoint MK Ayoob Kara as minister of communications, Walla! News reports. The appointment will be brought before the government for approval at its meeting today. MK Tzachi Hanegbi has been serving in the post temporarily, but Netanyahu has been obliged to make a permanent appointment.
A week ago, the prime minister's bureau said that he would decide on the appointment of a minister today, as the visit to Israel of US President Donald Trump last week meant he could not devote time to the matter.
Last week it was reported that Netanyahu had offered the communications portfolio as an additional portfolio to Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin, but that Levin had refused the appointment.
After the 2015 election, Netanyahu insisted on keeping the communications portfolio of himself, but in February, against a background of petitions to the High Court of Justice, he transferred it to Hanegbi as a temporary measure. The court petitions concerned conflicts of interest because of Netanyahu's connection with Arnon Milchan, one of the owners of Channel 10 and one of the main figures in the police "File 1000", the investigation into gifts received by the prime minister from Milchan among others.
The revelation of those gifts, and of conversations between Netanyahu and "Yediot Ahronot" owner Noni Mozes concerning the newspaper's coverage of the prime minister and competition in the newspaper industry, which are also being investigated by the police in what is known as "File 2000", led to two petitions being filed in the High Court of Justice against Netanyahu continuing to hold the communications portfolio, one by leader of the opposition Isaac Herzog and the other by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 28, 2017
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