At least six MKs from the Likud will face off in a vote in a party meeting on Wednesday for the influential position of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairmanship, after party faction leader MK Ofir Katz announced on Monday that MK Yuli Edelstein will be removed from the position.
Edelstein himself is running, as are MKs Hanoch Milwidsky, Boaz Bismuth, Eli Dallal, Nissim Vaturi, and Avichai Boaron. Other than Edelstein, only Bismuth and Vaturi are sitting members of the committee, and Milwidsky is a back-up member, meaning he could attend meetings instead of another sitting member of the Likud. Bismuth is also a member of the highly classified Subcommittee for Intelligence and Secret Services.
Five Likud MKs filed a request on Tuesday that the vote be a secret vote instead of an open one. The Likud’s constitution says that 10% of the voting body may demand a secret vote, and the five members exceed the 10% mark. The constitution does not specify whether the body’s chairperson, in this case Katz, has to accept the demand, but that is likely the case.
The frontrunners are reportedly Edelstein, Milwidsky, and Bismuth.
The vote pitted MKs in the party against each other. An official in the party who spoke on condition of anonymity argued that Milwidsky did not have the proper background or experience, and that he was being considered due to his alliance with Katz. Milwidksy reportedly has a strong voter base in the party’s primary election, and the official said that he and Katz had pledged mutual support in the next primary in exchange for support in the FADC chairmanship vote.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly been deliberating over whether or not to replace Edelstein, following the fallout last week between Edelstein and ultra-Orthodox haredi politicians that led the two haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), to exit the government.
The current crisis started because of a haredi bill proposal
The fallout came over the text of a bill to regulate haredi service in the IDF. Haredi politicians opposed Edelstein’s attempts to insert enforcement and oversight mechanisms to ensure that haredi who receive an exemption from IDF service are actually studying in yeshivot.
The MK who replaced Edelstein may be willing to make concessions that Edelstein was not willing to make, thus allowing the bill to proceed.
However, even a more lenient version of the bill may not eventually receive the necessary support in order to advance. In an interview on Channel 12 on Tuesday afternoon, Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel (United Right) criticized Edelstein’s removal, and said that the party’s four MKs would not support a move to enable haredim to evade the IDF draft.
A number of MKs in the Likud have also expressed reservations about the attempts to exempt haredim from service, and may not automatically support any bill that advances under the new committee chairperson.