Sometimes things in politics don't always make sense. Or, at least, sometimes things just seem backwards. This happens most frequently, I think, when the country elects a right-wing government that ends up implementing, often enough, left-wing policy.
The situation yesterday looked like that might be the case again. It looks like a case of crazy irony, as a Likud MK proposed a law that would implement Israeli law over "the settlements", aka the West Bank, aka Judea and Samaria. Doing so would take the decision to allow construction or to disallow it out of the hands of the Defense Minister (Ehud Barak as of right now) and into the regular system of Israeli law and decision making.
MK Miri Regev proposed the law, and it had wide support among the various ministers who needed to vote on it. Until the prime minister got involved. PM Netanyahu pressured the ministers to back down and vote against the proposal in the ministerial committee, ensuring it would be killed and not moved forward.
It looks strange. it looks ironic. It looks crazy. But I understand it. Passing this law would put Israel in a very precarious position in the international community. While I might not care so much about that, as no matter what Israel does or does not do it seems like Israel is always in that precarious position, but I can understand why the prime minister would want to avoid such a situation.
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Very easy to understand, I think. A populist law that would enable the MKs to look good, and strong, and right-wing to their voters, but the prime minister would have to deal with the international fallout, which would be huge, so he killed it. Because as prime minister, he has to be a responsible adult - they don't. But it's a good thing somebody is.
ReplyDeleteAnd besides Bibi likes giving Barak all that power (though I don't know why)
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