Over the past few days, the heartbreaking cries over the theft of democracy from Blue and White and their allies in the media, have been heard loud and clear. In the story they're trying to sell us, the guilty ones, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yuli Edelstein, are refusing to give Blue and White a majority in the Knesset Arrangement Committee and are thus paralyzing the parliament and the necessary supervision over the government.
But the truth is the ones that are actually using the coronavirus crisis cynically and shamelessly for minor political gains, are the Liberman-Yazbek coalition.
Let's start at the end: The only reason Blue and White are fighting over the Arrangement Committee and preventing the convening of the plenum and the work of the parliamentary committees from getting underway is because they know for certain that Gantz can't form a government.
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If the Arrangement Committee is set up equally, regardless of its size, as long as the mandate for forming the government is with Gantz, the chairman of the committee will be from Blue and White. That means that in the case of a tie, the deciding vote will belong to Avi Nissenkorn.
The Knesset Law, which dictates the composition of the committee, does not acknowledge the term "bloc" or any other kind of division. It gives parliament seats according to the size of the faction. The calculation according to this law leads to a tie between the blocs.
Blue and White are not willing to accept this and are trying to invent new calculations to make the committee even larger until they get a majority in the Arrangement Committee. They want the same imaginary "bloc" they currently have, even after Gantz fails to form a government, to keep holding on to the Arrangement Committee in order to pass personal laws that would lead Israel to a fourth round of elections while coronavirus rages.
That future gain, which they don't even deserve by law, is what will allow them to continue to make life difficult for Netanyahu and his government, even after Gantz's expected failure. They will hold the Knesset and all of us hostage.
The Knesset speaker's offer to set up an agreed-upon and equally divided Arrangement Committee in order to get the Knesset up and working and save the fight over its future composition for later was supposed to solve the crisis. Instead, we're seeing that their crises and protests only have one purpose: To create the conditions for the blame game in the next elections.
The Knesset has always reached agreement on the composition of the Arrangement Committee and never had to vote or choose between a few options. The decision of the Knesset, to set up an Arrangement Committee against the rules of the law and with no agreement, may lead to parties who feel they have been wronged filing petitions to the High Court of Justice. Causing further delays and more harm to the image and independence of the Israeli legislature.
The fact that, despite everything going on around us, Blue and White continues to disregard tradition and the rules of the game, all while rolling their eyes and crying crocodile tears, is very disturbing.
The fact that the heads of Blue and White refuse to immediately get the Knesset up and running shows that the State of Israel and the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus are not their priority.
Israel before everything? Apparently not. Petty politics is way ahead.
