In the video: Ben-Gvir answers Netanyahu: "We will not get to votes" (Photo: Avi Rokach)
Members of Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party were absent from some of the Knesset plenum votes on Wednesday to protest the fact that the budget of hundreds of millions demanded by the Ministry of the Negev and Galilee, headed by Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, had not been arranged.
A bill by MK Meir Cohen of Yesh Atid was approved in the plenary session in a preliminary reading after the coalition realized that it did not have a majority due to the absence of Ben-Gvir and Otzma Yehudit members, and it reversed its position and supported the opposition's proposal. This is a proposal regarding eligibility for diagnosing learning disabilities for children from disadvantaged families.
After Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich visited the Galilee today, Wasserlauf tweeted: "Bezalel, no empty slogans. If the Galilee is important to you, don't cut budgets for the advancement of the Negev and Galilee."
Wasserlauf expressed his displeasure with what he called an "unfair distribution" of the state budget. "It's easy for Smotrich to negotiate with himself," he said. "Judaizing the Galilee has been neglected and it is impossible to save the situation without the budget."
"The important task of Judaizing the Negev and Galilee is neglected. How do we do it without money? In the heart of the Galilee today there are only 14% Jews, and how did this happen? A Bedouin or Arab discharged soldier who is discharged from the IDF is entitled to a 90 percent discount in the heart of the Galilee on the ground. Why is a Jewish discharged soldier who wants to buy land in the Misgav Regional Council for that matter, why is he not entitled to the same discounts? The steps we will take is to subsidize land for discharged soldiers equally. I didn't ask to take away the benefits from them, but apply it to Jews as well. That's why I need a budget to save the situation," he added.
Yitzhak Wasserlauf, Minister of Development of the Periphery, Negev and Galilee (Photo: official website, Assi Efrati, GPO)
At the beginning of Operation Shield and Arrow in Gaza, Ben-Gvir announced the end of the voting boycott after Otzma Yehudit chairman demanded the implementation of a "right-wing policy" as he defined it in dealing with terrorism. During the vote boycott, members of his faction were absent from committee and plenary deliberations, and ministers did not participate in government meetings.
"Following the acceptance of our position and the transition from containment to attack in the targeted killings of senior Islamic Jihad figures, we will return to vote with the government. Hopefully, the offensives will be maintained for a long time," the party said at the start of the operation. Senior coalition officials criticized the party's conduct, saying that "the security measures of the State of Israel have nothing to do with the step taken by one party or another in the coalition, and are carried out solely on the basis of security and political considerations."
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- Itamar Ben-Gvir
- State budget
- Knesset
- Otzma Yehudit
