Netanyahu Rival Quits Post, Fueling A Power Struggle
Israeli Finance Minister Dan Meridor, a Likud Party favorite son whose rivalry with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fed on years of mutual contempt, quit the government Wednesday and positioned himself to help break the premier’s grip on power.
Their immediate dispute turned on relaxation of Israel’s currency controls, but Netanyahu appeared to have been maneuvering all week to unseat a man he reluctantly brought into his cabinet a year ago.
The newspaper Maariv, which forecast Meridor’s ouster Monday on the basis of leaks from Netanyahu’s inner circle, reported then and again Wednesday that the prime minister intends to put the treasury in the hands of Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon. That would mark a substantial boost in power for the hawkish general, whose principal efforts in government have been devoted to increasing Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Meridor’s departure completed Netanyahu’s alienation from the historic and ideological core of his own Likud Party, enough so that Netanyahu referred to several of the party’s best-known figures Wednesday as a “gang of mudslingers.”
Those included the last Likud prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir; the man who handpicked Netanyahu for his first two jobs in government, former defense minister Moshe Arens; and Binyamin Begin, son of another Likud premier, who was the first of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers to quit.
On one level the episode was a sign of strength for Netanyahu and his Russian-born chief of staff, Avigdor Lieberman, who wrested control of the Likud in 1993 and held long-standing grudges against Meridor’s generation of heirs apparent to party leadership.
But the loss of Meridor looked to be politically costly as well. By a 3-to-1 margin, Israeli Jews expressing an opinion in an Israel Television poll Wednesday night took the finance minister’s side, and several weak links in Netanyahu’s governing coalition said or implied that they were close to bolting.
Natan Sharansky, who declared a “crisis of faith with the prime minister” on behalf of his Israel Aliyah Party of recent Russian immigrants, said, “We already have one foot out the door.”
Alex Lubotsky, the junior legislator of the Third Way party, called Meridor “the cornerstone of the government,” adding, “It seems to me that a process is developing that will bring down the government.”
Between them, those two parties control 11 of the 66 votes that make up Netanyahu’s governing majority in the 120-seat parliament. Another three votes Netanyahu must count on come from men who have resigned in anger: Meridor, Begin and former Deputy Finance Minister David Magen.