Gas Deal Includes Likud Outsourcing Electoral Losses To Labor

“We don’t need Likud to help us drop into political irrelevance,” declared MK Shelly Yechimovich.

Jerusalem, February 7 – Israel’s Supreme Court heard testimony last week relating to several petitions against the natural gas deal approved by the government, including several third-party objections to a provision of the agreement under which electoral failures of the Likud Party would be subcontracted to the Labor Party.

Four NGOs operating the arena of electoral reform and the rule of law submitted objections to the agreement between the government and the private companies who will extract the gas from beneath the Mediterranean Sea bed and deliver it via pipeline either to Israel or to buyers in other parts of the Mediterranean rim such as Greece, Cyprus, or Egypt. The organizations contend that a clause of the agreement calling for Labor to absorb the political losses of Likud over the next fifteen years constitutes an undemocratic measure that violates the country’s election laws.

A spokeswoman for the groups, which include the Israel Democracy Institute, the Center for the Study of Money in Politics, and The Movement for Quality Government, explained that such an arrangement essentially privatizes and usurps what should be a public function. “Labor should sink into irrelevance on its own demerits,” insisted Tzipi Tvusah. “There is enough dysfunction, infighting, incompetence, lack of vision, insecurity, and egomania in Labor – not to mention the Zionist Union – to keep the party relegated to a secondary role in national politics for a good three or four election cycles. Having Labor take on Likud’s losses as well can only handicap the electorate, and such a provision of the gas deal does a disservice to democracy, no matter how much Labor deserves it.” The Zionist Union is the alliance that Labor formed in late 2014 with former Likud, then former Kadima, then HaTnuah MK Tzipi Livni.

Other opponents of the measure came from within Labor itself. “We don’t need Likud to help us drop into political irrelevance,” declared MK Shelly Yechimovich. “Our incoherence alone on the feasibility of arriving at a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians should suffice to drop three seats in the next elections. And once Livni realizes we’re headed for the Opposition once again, she’ll bolt with her contingent, probably to Yesh Atid, depleting our ranks even further. It was an admission of weakness to agree to absorb any Likud losses, and I, for one, support the efforts to have at least that portion of the gas deal overturned.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Likud politicians expressed bitterness that they were not consulted on whose kickbacks would be reduced in order to finance the deal.