Newly sworn-in Knesset paralysed by political fights, coronavirus

After being sworn-in Monday, the 23rd Knesset is currently “paralysed” and “unable to function”, reported Haaretz, thanks to “a combination of political wrangling and the coronavirus epidemic”.

As a result, “members have yet to be appointed to Knesset committees, including crucial ones like the special committee on the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee and the Knesset Finance Committee”, the paper stated.

Meanwhile, “no legal arrangement has been found to allow the Knesset to hold a vote while complying with the Health Ministry directive prohibiting gatherings of more than 10 people.”

In a further complication, the arrangements committee which serves as a “key vehicle for Knesset activity between an election and the formation of a new government” has yet to be established due to disputes between the Likud-led and Blue and White-led blocs.

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Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) has placed most of the blame on Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

“Currently, the only functioning institution in the country is the unelected caretaker government, with a prime minister who lost the election,” claimed Yair Lapid, Blue and White’s number two.

“Because he has no Knesset majority, he shut down the Knesset. Because he was supposed to stand trial, he shut down the courts.”

“This is a dangerous situation, in which they’re trying to abolish the legislature and leave only the executive,” Gantz warned. “The Likud party, at the behest of Netanyahu and Edelstein, is trying at any price to prevent the Knesset from functioning.”

The composition of the arrangements committee has been a particular focus of partisan dispute, with Blue and White demanding that the committee be made up of 17 members, with proportionate representation from each party in the Knesset.

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Likud, on the other hand, insisted that every committee contain only ten members – a number, Haaretz noted, “that would effectively neutralise” the Blue and White-led bloc’s numerical edge.

“We’d be happy to set up committees of up to 10 members, in line with the Health Ministry’s instructions,” Miki Zohar of Likud wrote on Twitter in response to Lapid’s comments. “The public’s health is above all else, including your bottomless hatred of the prime minister.”

Edelstein has apparently “shrugged off the criticism and blamed other parties for the crisis,” Haaretz reported, saying he “is working to solve it and is considering exceptional measures to enable committees to be established.”