Minister Avidar Announces Resignation from the Cabinet
In recent news, Eli Avidar, an important part of Yisrael Beytenu, was claimed to be resigning from his position as a minister in the cabinet. As per the news, he was going to be returning to the Knesset to once again make laws, as of Tuesday afternoon. It was further expected that he was going to remain a part of the coalition. This announcement from Avidar was supposed to come at a time when the coalition is undergoing a turbulent and rough patch. Just a day ago the Blue and White party revealed that it would be boycotting the votes of the Knesset due to a couple of gripes with the Israeli government. As a result, the coalition pulled various bills from the plenum agenda for the evening.
As of now, Avidar acts as a minister at the Office of the Prime Minister. For a long time now, he has been actively criticising the government of the State of Israel, which he belongs to. His discontent further rose when he wasn’t given the position of the senior minister as he had expected, back when the government had formed. It had been expected that Avidar would take over the position, which had been held by Elazar Stern, the intelligence minister, at the time. This was going to happen when the latter was going to be appointed as the head of the Jewish Agency.
However, Stern decided not to run for the chairman due to various controversies surrounding him at the time, some of which were related to rumours of sexual harassment. Claims had been made that the minister had purposefully ignored complaints of this nature, back when he had been the Manpower Directorate of the IDF. Thus, Stern retained his position as the minister, which led to Avidar being disappointed as he could not assume the role he had been hoping to. In August of 2021, Avidar had been appointed to the Office of the Prime Minister. At the time, he had given in his resignation at the Knesset, as per the Norwegian Law.
According to the law, deputy ministers and ministers have to resign from their seats at the Knesset and allow the next candidate to take up their position. This candidate is appointed as per the electoral slate of the party. If Avidar moves according to the expected plan and returns to the Knesset, it will mean that Sharon Roffe Ofir, his replacement from the party of Yisrael Beytenu, will be forced to quit the parliament. Gideon Sa’ar, the justice minister, was asked for a comment regarding the expected resignation. While talking about Avidar, he explained that there has been some turbulence in the coalition.
According to him, it is clear that Avidar has worked hard to ensure the establishment of the government of Israel and would not do anything to harm or jeopardize its function and existence. Sa’ar went on to say that for the past couple of weeks, the government has been experiencing various problems, which have had a negative impact on the work going on in the Knesset.