Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot Acharonoth:
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. Histadrut Chairman Ofer Eini stepped into this leadership vacuum.
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.
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.
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."
