Blue and White officials threatened the Likud on Wednesday that if there will be no breakthrough in coalition talks, it would enable the passage of bills targeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is a 61-seat majority for bills that would prevent an indicted prime minister from forming a government and would limit a prime minister to only two terms. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is Knesset speaker, so would decide when the bills would come to a vote.
Blue and White’s former allies in Yesh Atid-Telem have been pleading with Gantz to enable the bills to come to a first reading in the Knesset plenum, arguing that it would improve his bargaining position.
“We want to form an emergency government, but we won’t enter at any price,” a source in Blue and White said.
Blue and White officials were particularly angry at the Likud for backtracking on giving Blue and White veto power over key appointments, including the next police chief. The Likud instead said each party should control its own appointments during the time it is in power. In such a scenario, Miri Regev could pick the next police chief herself, if she becomes public security minister.
Gantz holds leverage over the Likud, because Netanyahu cannot form a government without Blue and White, assuming Labor Party leader Amir Peretz and former Blue and White rebels Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel keep their promises not to join the government without Blue and White.
Peretz indicated at the Knesset on Wednesday that he knew he would face hefty criticism for joining a Netanyahu-led government, despite his shaving his mustache as a promise to not do so. He said he was ready to absorb that condemnation.
Labor will hold a vote on joining the government in its institutions by video conference as soon as a deal is reached between the Likud and Blue and White.
Channel 13 reported that in the deal, tthere will be a second Prime Minister's Residence that will serve Gantz and then Netanyahu when they are vice prime minister,
Gantz gave a hint that perhaps a deal could be reached over the weekend, when he closed the proceedings of the Knesset plenum by saying that a special meeting of the plenum could be initiated if it was necessary.
“Israel deserves a functioning government and coalition, which sees the Knesset as an institution that oversees it, critiques it, and sometimes even inhibits it,” Gantz told the plenum. “My colleagues and I will be vigilant in ensuring that it does so.”