Lieberman declared, "Israel supplied assault rifles and light weapons to crime families in Gaza, under the direction of Netanyahu. The weapons are transferred to criminals and offenders and turned against Israel." He raised doubts about the process, stating, "To my assessment, this did not receive approval from the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet. The Shin Bet chief knows, I'm not sure the IDF chief of staff knows. We're talking about the equivalent of the Islamic State in Gaza."

The Prime Minister's Office responded without denying the allegations, noting, "Israel is acting to defeat Hamas in various and diverse ways, upon the recommendation of all heads of the security establishment."

Lieberman warned of the dangers, saying, "Nobody can guarantee that these weapons won't be turned against Israel. We have no ability to supervise or track them." He also cast doubt on Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar's performance, remarking, "I'm not sure how much Ronen Bar is functioning a week before he leaves."

Lieberman reinforced his stance on X, posting, "Don't give them rifles," a zinger that alludes to the right-wing slogan from the 1990s against arming the Palestinian Authority during the implementation of the Oslo Accords.

The post Did Israel covertly arm Gaza's ISIS-linked militia? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Israeli government sources launched a fierce attack on Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman Thursday after he claimed that Israel was arming militias associated with ISIS in the Gaza Strip on orders from Netanyahu's office. The Prime Minister's Office did not deny Lieberman's statements and said, "Israel acts to defeat Hamas in various and diverse ways on the recommendation of all security establishment heads."

Israel Hayom has learned that the militia was likely involved in a shooting near aid distribution centers earlier this week, for which foreign media falsely blamed the IDF. Those same armed individuals tried to drive away Hamas members who threatened with weapons those who went to collect supplies from the distribution centers run by US private contractors. Senior Israeli security officials confirmed Thursday that non-Hamas, non-Fatah local militias in Gaza were cooperating with Israel, engaging Hamas in combat, and guarding aid sites.

"Lieberman, the serial leaker lacking responsibility, apparently prefers that our soldiers risk their lives against Hamas instead of using local armed groups in certain situations," a government source said. "When everything is positioning and personal politicking – even thinking becomes distorted."

Another senior source said Lieberman "completely lost it again. While his leftist camp colleagues spread antisemitic blood libels against Israeli Air Force soldiers, Lieberman chooses to endanger our soldiers and the country's security to gather votes."

MK Yulia Malinovsky, who is in Lieberman's Knesset faction, responded to briefings from "a senior source in the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet" against Lieberman for exposing that Netanyahu distributes weapons to clans associated with ISIS in the Strip. "Those who caused there to be hostages in Gaza in the first place are the misconception people led by the October 7 prime minister. Netanyahu, who transfers humanitarian aid worth 700 million shekels ($197 million) to Hamas, endangers our soldiers," she said.

She added that "whoever distributes weapons to ISIS militias is completely irresponsible and unrestrained. Whoever approved the transfer of Qatari cash suitcases to Hamas must go home. That same senior source in the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet reveals himself as a cynical person who prevents action only from narrow political motives."

Lieberman responded by tweeting on his X account, "To the October 7 government that arms clans associated with ISIS – the October 7 prime minister learned nothing and still continues with the same conception that led us to the greatest massacre in the state's history. Netanyahu cultivated Hamas for years and refused to listen to me when I said that by doing so he severely harms Israel's security. Right now he is repeating the exact same mistake and transferring weapons to clans associated with ISIS in Gaza."

Diplomatic-Security Cabinet ministers said they "are not familiar with weapon distribution in Gaza to clans. The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet did not approve arming of organizations in Gaza, but Israel does act to create conflict between Hamas and other forces."

Meanwhile, the terror organization announced that leadership has intensified its internal activity in the Strip in recent days. As part of an extensive operation against suspects who collaborate with Israel. Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the directive was issued to senior security apparatus officials and military wing personnel, aimed at acting against troublemakers. According to sources who spoke with the newspaper, some of the suspects were shot, others were beaten and some were even executed.

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Thousands of farmers blocked roads and junctions across Israel on Thursday in protest of reforms that would open the fruit, vegetable and egg markets to foreign import, a move they say will threaten their livelihoods.

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The reforms were proposed last week by Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Agriculture Minister Oded Forer.

The farmers arrived at junctions on tractors and other heavy equipment as early as 7 a.m., and threw eggs and produce on the roads in anger.

The reforms aim to recognize European standards on fruits and vegetables and create more competition in the industries, thus, in theory, lowering prices. This will be done gradually by lowering tariffs on fruit and vegetables.

Additionally, regulations on European fruits will be loosened, meaning there will be a bigger range of fruits available all year round.

The reform, however, also includes compensation in the form of a support package consisting, among other things, of direct financial support for each farmer per cultivated dunam (acre). It also offers expanded tax benefits to encourage capital investment and an investment of over NIS 2 billion for raising productivity in the agriculture industry.

Avshalom Vilan, head of the Israeli Farmers Union, said: "Farmers from all over Israel went out to protest and say clearly: The prices in supermarkets are high not because of the farmers, who only receive a few shekels [per kilogram] for their produce, but because of the supermarket chains, who multiply the prices and make billions of shekels off of the backs of the farmers and consumers.

"The farmers have no control over fruit and vegetable prices or on the high cost of living" he continued. "This is cowardice on the part of the Finance and Agriculture ministers, who are afraid to challenge the retailers and supermarket chains, and therefore are bullying the farmers, who work in the fields in the heatwaves and the winter. The price mark-up is in the hundreds of percent, but apparently, they're afraid of taking on the chain stores."

Vilan added that "We're out here to prove that Israel's agriculture will not be shut down. We will not comply with a reform that will harm the country, the citizens, the farmers, and our collective physical and nutritional safety."

Last week, when announcing the reforms, Lieberman said their purpose was to "strengthen the Israeli farmer while addressing the cost of living and benefit consumers."

On Thursday, he said: "Throwing eggs, fruits and vegetables on the ground while blocking roads won't benefit the consumers. I'm sorry that farmers choose not to focus on the most troubling question – why in the last 20 years fruit prices have increased by more than 100%, vegetables by more than 80%, while consumption has fallen by 20%, and why fruits in Scandinavia are cheaper than Haifa?"

Lieberman added that the reform provides "unprecedented benefits" to farmers.

If it is adopted, the reform plan is expected to save Israelis around 2.7 billion shekels (around $823.6 million) a year, according to Lieberman and Forer.

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Prominent ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky spoke out harshly against Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman earlier this week for his plan to cut childcare subsidies in a way that would primarily affect Haredi fathers who opt for full-time yeshiva over integrating into the workforce.

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According to sources, Kanievsky said Lieberman "deserves no forgiveness" for "harming children."

Nevertheless, he assuaged the ultra-Orthodox community by promising them the new law would not harm the study of the Torah.

"The Torah is eternal, and no decree will cause its study to stop. There have been decrees in years prior, and the people of Israel withstood them and continued to study Torah."

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Israel's likely new finance minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said on Thursday that economic growth and raising the number of ultra-Orthodox in the workforce would be his main goals.

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Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party and seven other parties reached a coalition agreement on Wednesday night that would unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if it is ratified by the Knesset next week.

"This coalition will focus mainly on economic issues," Lieberman, a former defense minister, told Israel's Channel 13.

He said one major challenge would be to bring Israel's "unreasonable" budget deficit under control.

Another was to bring Haredi men into the labor force – currently only around half of them work, the others are devoted full-time to religious studies and rely on government allowances and handouts from donors.

"We will do everything to provide them an education and enable them to learn a profession and stand on their own two feet, as opposed to charity and all the stipends," he said.

But the main goal was to heal the economy, he said.

"We are a country that hasn't had a budget for the past two years already," he said.

On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel's economy contracted 2.6% in 2020 but could see growth of as much as 6% this year.

Similarly, the budget deficit jumped to 11.6% last year from 3.7% in 2019 due to large stimulus spending to help businesses and households cope with the crisis.

"It's terrible," Lieberman said of the higher deficit. "Generally the government's deficit target is 2.5% or 2.7%. When you jump from 2.5% to 11.6%, that's unreasonable."

Israel is using a pro-rated version of a base budget from 2019 that was approved in mid-2018.

Lieberman said he plans to implement a comprehensive economic stability program "to create growth because you have to increase the budget, not the budget deficit."

Once he takes office, he said, his first phone calls will be to the central bank governor and the heads of the Manufacturers' Association and Histadrut Labor Federation.

When asked whether he would raise taxes, Lieberman said, "That's not effective." But he did not rule out higher taxes as part of a broader plan.

On Tuesday, however, United Torah Judaism MK Israel Eichler told Israel Radio that Lieberman's would-be appointment as finance minister was "a declaration of war against a million Haredi citizens of Israel."

"If United Torah Judaism were to get the Treasury and the Knesset Finance Committee, the media would have talked about extortion," Eichler said.

Eichler made his comments after Israel Hayom reported that under the likely coalition agreement, Yisrael Beytenu would secure the Finance portfolio, the Negev and Galilee Development portfolio, and apparently another ministry. In addition, an MK from the party would be appointed head of the Knesset Finance Committee, a role UTJ chair Moshe Gafni currently holds.

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Shas MK Yinon Azoulay expressed similar sentiments in an interview to Army Radio.

"Everyone is in [the new government] – the national religious, the Left, and the Arab sector, but not the Haredim. They have a political right to form a government, but they don't have a right to take Haredi children and allow them to go hungry," Azoulay said.

Yehuda Shlezinger contributed to this report.

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Having likely realized his party of incitement and hatred is on the path to the trash bin of Israeli politics, Avigdor Lieberman is stressed out.

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Founded in 1999 and headed by Lieberman from Day 1, Yisrael Beytenu cannot point to one single achievement over the years. Good citizens that made aliyah from former Soviet states have for years served as pawns in the party leader's game. Lieberman has a unique ability to change the focus of his hatred and sling mud at various sectors in Israeli society. At one time, it was the disloyal Arabs, and then it was the "messianic" religious Zionists. Now, of course, it's the Haredim he refers to as a "piggish cult."

His stated desire to put the Haredim and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a wheelbarrow and toss them into the nearest landfill is proof Lieberman's hatred and rudeness are without limit. He will go down in Israeli political history as the person who pushed it to degenerate to record levels of hatred and disgust. More than anything else, the giggles in the television studios over Lieberman's remarks are symbolic of the miserable state of a biased media that specializes in spewing hatred everywhere.

It's no surprise, then, that Yisrael Beytenu and the Joint Arab List, parties that were once sworn enemies, are now natural partners. Both parties share a common goal: the disintegration of Israeli society from within. The Joint Arab List acts in the terror-supporting Palestinian Authority's interests, creating an ongoing and dangerous confrontation between Israel's Arab and Jewish citizens. Yisrael Beytenu incessantly incites Israeli citizens who hail from the former Soviet Union against the religious and Haredi sectors, thereby fanning the flames of hate for hatred's sake. This hatred was the cause of the Second Temple's destruction and now threatens the third.

Many of Lieberman's voters have issues with the issue of conversion and matters of religion and state. It turns out that petty politicians believe it's easier to earn votes through shared hatred. The immigrant community is wrong to think Lieberman's conduct will help them with the issues that matter most to them. The opposite is true. This antagonism will only make it harder to reach a resolution, and appropriate solutions must be reached through mutual consideration.

Yisrael Beytenu's voters are beginning to realize they're being used. My suggestion to them would be not to support a party that raises the banner of hatred. They are all too familiar with what hatred looks like where they come from. A million immigrants who came to Israel from the former Soviet Union have been well-assimilated and no longer need a sectorial political party that serves no one but its leader. We all came to Israel to build and be built, not to hate and destroy. The time has come to kick out hate and come together in love.

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Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Lieberman doesn't hate Haredim. He has no problem with their yeshivas, their budgets, or their lifestyle. Nor does he mind that they don't serve in the military, learn core subjects, or have a high birthrate.

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In his previous life, everyone actually thought he hated Arabs. The fact that he agreed to sit in a government with the Joint Arab List is proof he never meant a word of what he said. Lieberman never had a problem with their refusal to recognize Israel's Jewish character, their support for terrorism, or their opposition to peace with moderate Arab states.

How can it be that Lieberman, who has been in Israeli public life for decades, is okay using any means necessary to so blatantly and shamelessly change his skin? The reason is that he is a professional liar. All politicians must bend the truth to some extent to succeed. Many face criticism for it. Lawmakers, ministers, and political candidates are often confronted with their old statements on television news, and they are often embarrassed when they are exposed for having once said the exact opposite of what they now say today.

Not Lieberman. Lieberman will not be embarrassed because lying is his profession. It was just 12 years ago that Lieberman led the demand for a change to the legal system. When he entered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, he demanded all the relevant files, from public security to the constitution committee. He also demanded Yaakov Neeman, a man hated by the system, be appointed justice minister. When then-senior Likud officials Benny Begin, Dan Meridor, and Miki Eitan prevented him from advancing changes he sought in the field, he insulted them and accused them of nitpicking.

Who would have believed that in just over a decade, Lieberman would himself become a nitpicker? He obviously never believed a word he said to begin with.

The Haredi parties understand this reality better than anyone. For decades, they worked shoulder to shoulder with Lieberman in several governments and countless arenas. Together, they cut deals and promoted various moves. To carry out his plans, Lieberman forged the kind of connections that allowed him access to important rabbis and could often be seen in the offices of Haredi ministers. Lieberman may be able to defraud the seven Knesset seats' worth of voters that support his party, but he won't fool Haredi lawmakers Aryeh Deri, Yaakov Litzman, or Moshe Gafni.

But the goods Lieberman is selling have lost their luster. From one election campaign to the next, Lieberman must become more radical and ramp up his provocations, and in other words, offer ever more incredulous lies to the point where there's no one left to believe him.

Lieberman's assertion that he would put the Haredim and Netanyahu in a wheelbarrow and throw them in a landfill is proof that beyond the culture of lies he has developed, Lieberman is positioning himself as a lowly political troll and the ultimate agent of chaos in Israeli politics.

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Over the past several weeks, Israel's political commentators have repeatedly declared the demise of the political left. On the face of things, they are right. The polls all show that the right-religious bloc will win a comfortable majority in the Knesset elections scheduled for next March. There is no way that the left-Arab bloc will win a sufficient number of seats to form a government.

The commentators insist that given the polls, today the name of the game is the contest between the right-wing leaders. Will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party win enough seats to maintain their dominant position? Will his opponents Gideon Sa'ar and Naftali Bennett win sufficient seats to unseat him?

With all due respect to the polls and the commentators that interpret them, the left is far from dead. True, its parties aren't popular enough to form a government. But that has been the case since the mid-1990s. The left long ago accepted that it has lost the public. Rather than reconsider its positions, the left developed a strategy that compensates for its lack of public appeal. That strategy enables the left both to seize and wield power without public support and prevent the right from wielding the power it wins at the ballot box.

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The left's post-democratic strategy has two main components. The first is the so-called deep state. The deep state in Israel is an amalgam of senior government officials, the legal fraternity including the state prosecution, the attorney general's office and the Supreme Court, and the media. Members of these groups are overwhelmingly associated with the left. They use their powers to advance the ideological and political goals of their camp while stymying the right's efforts to implement its own policy and ideological agenda.

This week we were witness to two spectacles of the deep state in action.

Tuesday, the justices of the Supreme Court conducted a hearing on a number of petitions asking the justices to abrogate the 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People. Despite the law's name, the hearing wasn't geared primarily to undermining Israel's Jewish national identity. Israel was the Jewish state before the law, and doesn't need the law to remain the Jewish state.

The purpose of the hearing had little to do with the law itself. Instead, as far as the justices were concerned its purpose was to stake out the claim that the Court has the right to overturn Basic Laws. To understand how radical this move is, it is important to understand the legal basis of the court's current powers.

Israel has no constitution. At the outset of Israel's so-called "judicial revolution" in the 1990s, the justices invented a distinction between Israel's Basic Laws, which deal with general principles of the state, and its other laws. On their own volition and with no legal foundation, the justices called the Basic Laws a constitution. Having made this determination, the justices proceeded to arrogate to themselves the power to abrogate the non-Basic Laws, claiming the Basic Laws as the source for their extra-legal seizure of power. A significant portion of the Court's more radical political judgments have been anchored in their radical interpretation of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. Among other things, they have used the law as a means to erode the significance of Israel's Jewish character.

The Knesset passed the Nation State law as a Basic Law in a bid to curb the justices' power to exploit their radical interpretations of the Human Dignity and Liberty law. Since the Court said the source of its power is the Basic Laws, it is self-evidently barred from abrogating the source of its authority. But on Tuesday, the justices set out to do just that and so seize the Knesset's power to legislate, as the sovereign repository of the people's will, the quasi-constitutional foundations of the state.

To legitimize her legally groundless action, during the hearing Chief Justice Esther Hayut announced the existence of a heretofore non-existent third type of law – the law that lets Supreme Court Justices abrogate Basic Laws. She referred to her new type of law as "the doctrine of amending laws that are unconstitutional."

Both Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin stated flat out that the justices have no legal authority to discuss the constitutionality of Basic Laws. But Hayut and her comrades, and their supporters in the media, the Attorney General's office and the left's political parties couldn't have cared less. They are staking a claim and there is nothing the government can do about it.

The day after Hayut's democracy-killing Kabuki court theater, her comrades in the Attorney General's office celebrated their own extra-legal seizure of power from Israel's elected leaders at a farewell bash for Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber.

Over the past decade, Zilber emerged as the symbol of the deep state's seizure of policymaking power from Israel's elected leaders. Whether she worked to undermine Israel's communities in Judea and Samaria, harm religious liberty or economic freedom, Zilber repeatedly used the language of law to present her political views as law. Her actions have compelled successive unwilling governments to advance the political and ideological goals of the left while undercutting those of the right.

In her farewell address, as has long been her habit, Zilber presented her unpopular, controversial ideological positions as uncontroversial and beyond reproach.

"What is unacceptable about the goal of inserting redistributive justice into the allocation of state resources?" she asked rhetorically.

Non-rhetorically, the concept of "redistributive justice" is highly controversial and unacceptable to a large cross-section of the public. Whether redistributive justice is something the government should or should not advance is a question for voters – not unelected government lawyers – to decide.

"What is unacceptable about aspiring to be a free nation in our land?" Zilber asked.

On the face of things, nothing about the aspiration immortalized in the national anthem is objectionable. But considering the source of the question, the answer is, it depends.

It depends on who decides what "free" means. It depends on who decides how "nation" is defined. And it depends on who decides what we're talking about when we say "our land."

Moreover, in the Jewish nation's free state in the land of Israel, the answer is that the public decides these things, not members of the state prosecution's appointments committee.

As she concluded her remarks, Zilber rallied her troops to carry on her democracy defying work. "Don't forget that you are the beautiful and the just. Many people in the silent majority are with us," she said.

This sort of nonsense is able to pass without episode because the media supports it. The media is the main tool that enables the likes of Zilber and Hayut to seize the powers of Israel's elected leaders. For years, the media have done their best to delegitimize every effort by right-wing politicians to advance their camp's political and ideological goals as somehow base and corrupt. The term "political" has become a dirty word. On the other hand, "professional" – as in everything "professional" judges and government lawyers do – is objective, and right and true and just and democratic.

Ironically, the right itself – or specific factions of the right – is the second component of the left's strategy for maintaining and expanding its power despite its lack of public support. The presence on Israel's political scene of right-wing political factions motivated primarily not by ideology but by hatred for Netanyahu enables the political left to secure its continued relevance and it enables the institutional left to secure its power. As Israel moves toward elections, there are two right-wing parties that are largely defined not by their ideological convictions but by their hatred of Netanyahu – Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party and Gideon Sa'ar's newly minted "New Hope Party."

Netanyahu hating rightists empower the left politically in two ways. First, while they are ideologically aligned with the right, they are politically aligned with the left. Both Lieberman and Sa'ar have made clear they will not join a coalition led by Netanyahu. Also running is Naftali Bennett and his Yamina party, which has made clear that it will join both a left-led coalition and a right-led coalition.

Sa'ar, Lieberman, Bennett and their colleagues understand that the only way for them to form a government without Likud and Netanyahu is to form a government with the left. Consequently, these "anyone-but-Bibi" rightists are the left's ticket to power. This unspoken, but well-understood state of affairs is the reason that the media, which has obsessively attacked Netanyahu for the past 25 years, slobbers over "anyone-but-Bibi" right-wing politicians.

Even when the "anyone-but-Bibi" camp doesn't have the requisite number of Knesset seats to form a government, so entrenched are its right-wing members in their hatred for Netanyahu that they still empower the left. Following the April and September 2019 elections, Lieberman prevented the formation of a government and forced the country into the second and third round of elections by refusing to join a Netanyahu-led coalition.

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And following the third round of elections, former Netanyahu aides and current "anyone-but-Bibi" right-wing politicians Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel who broke away from two parties to join the Blue and White list, were willing to block their leftist Blue and White party from forming a post-Zionist government with the Joint Arab List. But they weren't willing to leave Blue and White to join Netanyahu to form a right-wing government. And as a result, Netanyahu was compelled to form a coalition with Blue and White.

Blue and White's position in the outgoing government didn't give its leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi the power to implement their leftist policies. But it did give them the power to block Netanyahu and Likud from advancing their rightist policies which Hauser and Hendel ostensibly support. Gantz and Ashkenazi torpedoed Netanyahu's plan to apply Israel's sovereignty to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, in accordance with US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan. This week, Gantz and Ashkenazi blocked Netanyahu from bringing the young Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria to the government for formal approval. Blue and White's Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn has worked assiduously to expand the powers of his leftist partners in the judiciary and the state prosecution while ruling out the implementation of the Likud's agenda of legal reform.

Given the left's success in seizing and wielding power through its partners in the deep state and its enablers in the "anyone-but-Bibi" right, it is clear that the polls that give a significant majority of Knesset seats to right-wing parties obscure more than they reveal. The left remains the only power that competes with the Likud for power. And if Likud and its coalition partners do not win 61 seats in the upcoming elections, the left will continue to control the national agenda regardless of what the public thinks.

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The comments came in response to comments by Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, who called on the public to rebel against the government's safety measures due to its failure to manage the health crisis.

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"Unfortunately, politicians are exploiting the situation for political gains by calling [on the public] not to follow safety instructions," Netanyahu told reporters in Ramle after concluding a visit to IDF Home Front Command quarters, which is tasked with managing the pandemic.

"Dangerous and irresponsible statements by public representatives could lead to disobedience of Health Ministry and Israel Police guidelines – and as a result, to a loss of lives," the premier also wrote in a letter to lawmakers Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett, Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh and Lieberman.

After the planned night-time curfew in 40 cities and communities was postponed until Tuesday at 7 p.m. (Israel Time), Netanyahu said the government "wants to avoid a [nationwide] lockdown; by the end of the week we'll formulate a plan for the holidays."

Lapid, responding to Netanyahu, said, "Your dangerous comments, arrogance and irresponsibility, and the profound failure of the decision-making process have led to a situation with over 1,000 deaths from the coronavirus, close to a million unemployed, more than 70,000 business will shut down by the end of the year and the state of Israel is facing the largest budget deficit in its history."

He continued: "I expect you to take responsibility, admit your failure and resign. This is the only way for us to protect our health, our lives, the economy and the State of Israel."

Lieberman, too, issued a harsh response to the prime minister's letter.

"All the decisions you've made to this point have been driven by political considerations. You never bothered to convene the leaders of the opposition to explain the government's policies in terms of the coronavirus and the economic crisis, because you have no policy and therefore it's impossible to support something that doesn't exist," he said.

Israel's longest-serving prime minister, meanwhile, emphasized that the country's death toll was still relatively low compared to other countries with similar population sizes.

"I want to make it clear that things can always change," Netanyahu said. "We have a high morbidity rate, and it could get worse. The numbers are rising because people aren't wearing masks and there are many gatherings. This needs to stop. The experts fear a sudden surge in the number of serious cases and deaths – which hasn't happened yet."

On the economic front, he said: "There are difficulties and we all understand it, but you can say for certain that Israel's economy shrunk half of what European economies shrunk by. We brought grants, financial relief plans, extended unemployment benefits, etc."

Defense Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, who also addressed reporters, commended the Home Front Command and its cooperation with the Health Ministry, and coronavirus commissioner Professor Ronni Gamzu.

"With every passing week, we will continue to improve this issue. Our goal, eventually, is to break the transmission chain, to quarantine the right people and leave them there at the minimal time possible as determined by the Health Ministry," he said.

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As recently as November 2019, Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman had a different opinion, saying at the time, "I have no personal motives or vendetta against Netanyahu. In the last election campaign, I said repeatedly that as far as I was concerned, as long as there was no final ruling [against him], the prime minister could continue to serve. When the election was over, a bill was proposed that would prevent any MK under indictment from becoming a candidate for prime minister. I said we were against that because it was a personally motivated bill."

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MK Itzik Shmuli (Labor) said he "welcomed" Lieberman's announcement that his party would be supporting the bill.

"The election results show an anti-Netanyahu majority in the Knesset that is capable of leading a reversal and a victory. We have no intention of being instructed on democracy by someone who is accused of criminal acts and who is working day and night, 365 days a year, to crush it. We are aiming for victory, and not apologizing for it," Shmuli said.

Meretz Chairman Nitzan Horowitz on Wednesday called on Blue and White to form a government on the basis of a law that would prevent a prime minister under indictment from forming a government.

The new Knesset has an absolute majority [62 MKs] that would back a law barring a prime minister facing criminal charges from taking office. That is the right thing do to, politically. It reflects the wishes of the majority of voters and it is also morally appropriate."

As Netanyahu is facing corruption charges in three cases and his trial is set to begin on March 17, the move clearly seeks to block his path to office.

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