Two days after his dramatic announcement that he would resign from the government and from the Knesset, Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon will leave his post as minister of defense today. His resignation comes into force at 10:00 this morning, Channel 2 reports.
Ya'alon will leave an empty chair behind him, as the coalition agreement between the Yisrael Beitenu party has not yet been signed, and the announcement of the appointment of party leader Avigdor Liberman as minister of defense in place of Ya'alon has not yet been finally approved.
The negotiations on bringing Yisrael Beitenu into the government will reportedly be concluded today, but until that happens the defense portfolio will be held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Friday morning, Ya'alon announced that he would resign because he had lost faith in the prime minister. "This morning I informed the prime minister that I was resigning from the government and from the Knesset and taking time out from politics," Ya'alon said in an official statement at military headquarters in Tel Aviv. "I have no intention of leaving public life and politics in Israel," he continued, "I intend to return to run for national leadership in Israel."
Shortly after the announcement, Netanyahu expressed regret over Ya'alon's decision. "I presume that if Bogie Ya'alon had not been asked to leave the Ministry of Defense and move to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, what he calls a crisis of confidence between us would not have developed and he would not have resigned," the prime minister said.
Netanyahu said that the government reshuffle did not stem from a crisis of confidence with Ya'alon but from the need to broaden the coalition. "I think that he ought to have continued to be a partner in the leadership of the country as minister of foreign affairs," the prime minister added.
Netanyahu apparently realizes that he has sustained a political blow, which would explain his relatively restrained response to Ya'alon's resignation. The prime minister, who on other occasions has attacked people who have left his governments, said in private conversations that there had been unending provocations, but that they had not come from him towards Ya'alon but rather the opposite. Netanyahu also denied that he had behaved disrespectfully towards Ya'alon.
Netanyahu also said that he did not wish to see the IDF become politicized, and that no-one had muzzled IDF officers in closed discussions, certainly not in his cabinet, which he said was as open as could be.
Ya'alon's resignation as minister of defense leaves open several question about the future of the ruling Likud party and of Netanyahu's government, with the focus on the foreign affairs portfolio and the regional initiative spoken about by Egyptian present A-Sisi and Israel opposition leader Isaac Herzog. Ya'alon was to have become minister of foreign affairs, but after his resignation, Netanyahu means to keep the highly desirable portfolio in his own hands. One possible reason for this is that he is still calling on the Zionist Union, headed by Herzog, to join the government. Another reason is to avoid battles over the portfolio within his own party.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 22, 2016
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