Another plus for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that he was able to make history without much diplomatic risk, but by getting Israel’s fractious parliament to back the nation’s first two-year spending plan. The new budget totals 316.5 billion shekels ($80.7 billion) for 2009, and an additional 325.3 billion shekels ($82.9 billion) earmarked for next year, 2010. The final budget vote (it had to pass three) took an amazingly brief amount of time — just four and a half hours – about half of what was expected. The unanticipated brevity was made possible when Kadima, the largest, centrist, opposition party obliged by lifting a series of budgetary amendments from the agenda, removing the need to hold a list of additional tedious roll-call votes.
Netanyahu had to be present for the duration of the voting, as he couldn’t afford to leave the plenum before the budget passed, without risking the possible breakdown of his carefully stitched ruling coalition that passed the measure within hours of a Cinderella deadline. Under the law, Netanyahu had to get the budget passed by Thursday or his government would have fallen – according to a Parliamentary measure of a few months ago that extended the deadline for getting the state budget passed. So wearying was the process that some votes were done by show of hand, instead of the customary electronic push of a button, just to give lawmakers some exercise, the Ynet Web site said. Netanyahu was seen whiling away the more boring moments by busying himself with a book about Napoleon.
They had good reason to seek a diversion. Kadima had filed a whopping 4,000 amendments or spending proposals, and many were actually brought to a vote before the party agreed to drop the remainder. All these proposals had been destined for rejection, and some were for the smallest of sums, which begged the question, why the bother?
“Well we could just sit back and not play the game and all and just wait for the next elections,” Kadima’s spokesman Shmuel Dahan said replying to my question. “We were doing our job, and trying to demonstrate that this budget is a bad one for the country.”