The current public discourse surrounding the efforts to form a government and draw up its agenda has not taken into account one of the most important mechanisms in its working routine – the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
This body's prestige and its influence on affairs of state of momentous significance have created a special status for the cabinet ministers and turned membership of it into a highly sought-after position among most coalition parties, essentially shaping the cabinet's size and composition, and consequently impacting its effectiveness. The time is now ripe to change all that, based on broad consensus, and to create the necessary conditions to effect a genuine improvement in its working processes.
The Ministerial Committee on National Security Affairs, or as it is more commonly known – the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, has always been considered to be the most important and exclusive of all government ministerial committees. This committee is charged with dramatically important issues of national security, including the decision to go to war, deciding on government policy on defense and foreign affairs issues, and approving the IDF's multiannual buildup plans and its preparedness for war.
In May 2017, the government adopted the recommendations of the Amidror Commission on the cabinet's working processes, and since then they have been strictly implemented as part of its day-to-day routine. Subsequently, there has been a marked improvement in the preliminary staff work and the quality of the cabinet's discussions, but they still suffer from a series of weaknesses derived from the system of government or the inherent culture of debate and management.
One of the most influential factors on the quality of the cabinet discussions is its size and composition. Although a larger number of ministers might enable a broader variety of views and perspectives to be presented – as is appropriate for the type of issues discussed by the cabinet – it also makes it extremely difficult to frequently convene all the ministers, lengthens the duration of the discussions and increases the risks of an information leak.
The size of the cabinet does have an effect on its productivity and the number of issues it is able to debate. After all, we should bear in mind that the success of each cabinet minister is mainly gauged by the affairs and achievements of the government ministry he oversees. This does not leave an unlimited amount of time available for ministers to deal with cabinet affairs.
In order to streamline the cabinet's work and to enable in-depth discussions on the multitude of topics awaiting to be decided by it (in addition to those it must address following various ad hoc developments), at this juncture, even before the formation of the incoming government has been completed, it might be a good idea to reach an agreement on limiting the number of ministers serving in the cabinet. The optimum approach would be to have a single-digit cabinet and accordingly limit the number of participants in discussions to the minimum number laid down in the Amidror report. If no such agreement is reached, then it would be advisable to empower a limited ministerial team from within the cabinet ("a kitchen cabinet") to make routine decisions on issues to be defined by the cabinet itself.
An additional measure that could be of benefit, in order to focus the cabinet and to reduce the number of issues it has to decide on, would be to establish subcommittees and to delegate some of these matters to them (in a similar manner to the subcommittee that oversees defense exports or the ministerial forum for procurement).
It would also be prudent to examine the current cabinet minister model –with one or two ministers working within the Prime Minister's Office, both available and specifically tasked with cabinet affairs, including leading and inter-ministerial integration of those issues to be defined by it.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
