Israel's Cabinet Passes the Budget, No One Is Happy

In Israel, passing the annual state budget is an exercise that can destabilize governments. And yet, Israel's cabinet approved the 2009-2010 state budget with a strong majority in favor: twenty-six ministers voted for the budget, while all four Shas ministers voted against it.

Not everyone is happy however, opposition leader Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu to giving in to pressure to get the budget passed, and the Finance Ministry Budget Director Ram Belinkov is resigning. Israel Radio Reports that, "He said that his responsibility for the state budget required that he end his term in light of the government's behavior in putting together the budget in the last few weeks."

Ma'ariv reported this morning:

"Things can't get run this way." How simple and how poignant. That statement, which was picked up by a television camera yesterday, was spoken by Ram Belinkov, the director of the Budgets Branch in the Finance Ministry, who apparently felt that he had no choice but to take the matter up with Attorney General Meni Mazuz and to ask him to examine the legality of the budget that the cabinet tried to push through. That merely underscores the depths of despair that the Finance Ministry officials felt when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu negotiated with the Histadrut over their heads. They derailed all the talk on Monday, and remained dissatisfied even after a reconciliation meeting with Netanyahu last night.  

Belinkov was seen saying to Mazuz in a conversation they held in the corridor: "Things can't get run this way, Meni. Can I allow that in the agreement with the Histadrut they'll demand to separate the fictitious invoices, when we're trying to fight the crime world?  This is the very same HMO that asked me for NIS 500 million in aid, so because they want to buy Ofer Eini... Do you know what I said to them? Prime ministers have gone home here over less than that." [

Finance Ministry officials said in response: "The statements presented were taken out of context and not a single thing was said against the prime minister. Belinkov would like to clarify clearly and unequivocally that the statements that he made and which were broadcast last night were not directed against the prime minister or any other political figure. The attorney general will testify that that is the case as well."

First Explosion: Chief of Staff Ashkenazi

It was later reported that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi also felt that he needed to take a stand, and he addressed the prime minister directly with a demand not to cut the defense budget. "Officers in service aren't contract workers," said Ashkenazi. "They don't work for us. They serve."

Netanyahu replied: "I don't accept that."

Ashkenazi said in response: "Then don't accept it." IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu said "I wasn't at the cabinet meeting.

Second Explosion: Ofer Eini

It all began towards the end of last week, when Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz decided to introduce extensive cuts to the budget and austerity measures that the public was not prepared to take lying down.

Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini threatened to use his influence with the Labor Party to topple the government. Netanyahu agreed to drop most of the austerity measures and agreed, so it would seem, to increase the budget by three percent, which Finance Ministry officials claim endanger the economy.

Third Explosion: Finance Ministry

Ori Yogev, formerly the director of the Budgets Branch in the Finance Ministry and currently Prime Minister Netanyahu's economic adviser, is the strong man in the government's economic decision-making processes.

It was Yogev who reached the agreements with Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini over the "package deal."

Finance Ministry officials derailed the budget talks on Monday, infuriated by the fact that Netanyahu was holding the talks on a "Finance Ministry bypass" track.

Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot Acharonoth:

The first test a state leader faces is the test of character.  The people who sit around the cabinet table, ministers, army officers and senior officials, follow him with their eyes, their ears and mainly their noses.  Does he know what he wants, is he sure of himself, is he calm, or is there a weak, panicky person hiding inside the suit, who finds it difficult to withstand stressful situations.

When the ministers and officials smell fear in the perspiration of the prime minister, their tongue runs freely.  Chief of Staff Lt. Gen.

Gabi Ashkenazi permitted himself to reprimand the prime minister in the middle of the meeting on the budget, and to leave the meeting in a huff.

Finance Ministry Budget Director Ram Belinkov went even further, when in a documented hallway conversation with the attorney general, he used the word "bribery" to describe the negotiations with the Histadrut, and added that prime ministers here had been kicked out for less.

The first 50 days of Netanyahu's government passed without exciting external events-neither Kassam rockets nor terror attacks nor a dramatic turnabout in the economic situation.  All the government's disasters came from within.  Netanyahu chose to appoint Yuval Steinitz as finance minister, but very soon changed his mind and made his economic adviser Ori Yogev into the acting finance minister.  He presented an impressive economic plan together with Steinitz, which centered on lowering taxes, and within a few days left nothing of it.  Taxes are being raised, not being lowered.  The Finance Ministry presented a series of austerity measures, with Steinitz's approval and Netanyahu's knowledge, and within a day or two the austerity measures were gone.  The cut in the defense budget also disappeared, as did the government's decision on the size of the deficit.

Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini stepped into this leadership vacuum.

The man who formed the government is also the man who decides its budget.

Many of our prime ministers turned their own survival into the main thing, from a certain point.  This is happening to Netanyahu too soon:

Only 50 days in power, and not much is left: No plan, no vision and no ambition, save the ambition to survive.  The man who turned "if they give, they'll receive" into his political motto very soon reached the point where he is giving and giving, so long as power is not taken from him.  It is sad.

Nikita Khrushchev, who ruled the Soviet Union 50 years ago, said about president Kennedy after their meeting in Vienna in 1961, that Kennedy was "too intelligent and too weak."  He was wrong about Kennedy, but until he realized his error, the Soviet Union and the United States were on the brink of world war.

Netanyahu should pull himself together.  It is not only his 30 ministers who are scrutinizing him.  So are friends and enemies, from Washington to Tehran.

Ben Caspit in Ma'ariv:

What has been happening in the past few days surrounding the prime minister, his government and its budget, is known as loss of control.  There is no other name for it.

Clearance sale, Turkish bazaar, cattle rustling-any of the above.

Zigzag?  This is a gentle description for what has happened here.

Almost everything that was said, was not done.  What was done?  The opposite.  Almost everything that was promised, was not kept.  What was kept?  That isn't clear.  Everything that was declared before the elections, went up in the smoke of the Lag B'Omer bonfires.

Moreover, whereas until now there was at least some order in the chaos, and it was possible to blame the Finance Ministry officials, throw in a few items at the last moment that are meant to be removed immediately afterwards and then go home, now even this has been taken away from us.

Suddenly, as surreal as this sounds, we feel somewhat sorry for the Finance Ministry officials.  Poor Ram Belinkov.  Who would have believed it.  Apparently, Binyamin Netanyahu has not yet realized that the privatization era has passed.  The fact is, he has also privatized the Finance Ministry.  Controlling interest has been put into private hands (Ori Yogev), with preferred shares being held by outside lobbyists (Ofer Eini, Shraga Brosh).  Yuval Steinitz still stands at the helm, with his hair blowing in the wind, and we are also blown away.  Behind this helm there is nothing.  Neither a ship nor an engine.  Steinitz just stands there, turning a cardboard helm this way and that way, taking the criticism (which is excessive-he is not to blame), while the ship sails in an entirely different direction.

Anyone monitoring the conduct of the Prime Minister's Bureau is overcome by fright. When a person surrounds himself with people who lack real experience, people of little weight, who have never been in similar  situations, with such responsibility, with such pressures, it is no wonder that he needs the budget director to publish a clarification that "he was not referring to the prime minister" when he told Meni Mazuz that "he is susceptible to pressure."

Yesterday at about 10:00 PM, everyone hung around outside, waiting for it to end.  Fuad Ben-Eliezer ate his way through about three bars of chocolate, and threatened to go and leave a ballot behind.  Belinkov said that after the broadcast of his statements as picked up by Channel Ten's cameras, he received a text message from Yossi Paritzky (remember him?) worded as follows: "Welcome to the family of recorded people."

Yaakov Neeman went to pray.  We can only hope he was praying for us too.

Ministers left and returned, or failed to return.  Everyone was waiting for the bosses, i.e. Ofer Eini and Shraga Brosh, to come back with Ori Yogev and deliver the verdict.

At the very same time, the prime minister's two envoys, Uzi Arad and Ron Dermer, were at the White House, meeting with one of the assistants of the national security advisor, in preparation for the prime minister's visit to Barack Obama next week.  We had already forgotten that there was such a thing.  Next week, however, we will remember.  The budget will then look to us like a distant, fleeting episode.  We will miss it.  In Netanyahu's place, I would also take Ofer Eini to Washington.  That is the only chance for a package deal.