You Mean You Didn’t You Get Your Invitation for a Seat at the Table?

March 31, 2009

Only today does Israel have an incoming government, more than six weeks after the election. While a government in name, it’s not at all clear that it will be able to govern. In order to secure the 61 seats that he needs, Netanyahu has created a cabinet with 30 ministers and 7 or 8 deputy ministers, so more than half of the coalition is also in the cabinet! Apparently, they are going to have to find more furniture so that everybody can have a seat at the table when the cabinet meets. Why not just abandon the cabinet and govern directly through the entire Knesset?! With this cabinet, it means that more than half of the coalition will have the equivalent of executive responsibilities, because the separation between the legislative branch (Congress) and the executive branch (President) in the U.S. does not exist in the Israeli governing structure. Of course each of these seats in the cabinet has several costs. The transparent costs are the roughly 2 million NIS required to staff each minister and the promised expenditures on pet programs like Orthodox yeshivah subsidies. The covert costs are the secret agreements on expenditures that Netanyahu has made to recruit enough members to the 61 seats that he needs to be prime minister. Talk about conflicts of interest. The betting has already started on how many days Israel’s 32nd government will stand.