Less than a day after the High Court of Justice sent a message, questioning the legality of the custom whereby the prime minister holds a number of ministerial portfolios in addition to his main job – a message was fired back at the court by senior Likud figures: namely, if the court dares to make a final ruling in that spirit, the Knesset will pass legislation to bypass it. Plain and simple.

The comment by Justice Hanan Melcer – that Benjamin Netanyahu cannot hold multiple portfolios – is implicit in the language of the law, but the result is unreasonable: It’s not logical that a minister is permitted to hold two portfolios, or one and a half, but the prime minister is forbidden from holding a portfolio that’s dear to him or is of strategic importance – communications (in the case of Netanyahu), or defense (as with predecessors Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres and David Ben-Gurion). Nor is it reasonable for the prime minister not to be able to retain a ministry for tactical reasons, such as future coalition negotiations.

The Likud sources say Netanyahu fumed when he heard about Melcer’s remark. In his subjective view, he is again being targeted, raked over the coals. A procedure that worked for 67 years in 30 governments, without anyone saying a word, suddenly is in need of urgent revision.

Netanyahu has no intention of parting with either the foreign affairs or communications portfolios. If he’s forced to do so by the court, he will make good on the threat that’s been voiced – clearly, and in his name – by Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and coalition chairman Tzachi Hanegbi, and will see to it that the law is changed. For that, the premier will need the turnout of his entire minimalist coalition – on the assumption that all 59 members of the opposition will vote against. Given the deal that was revealed this week between Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party concerning the Judicial Appointments Committee, nothing is certain.

Yisrael Beiteinu has turned out to be an enigma, its leader a free agent. With his right hand, Lieberman causes Netanyahu colossal embarrassment by announcing that his faction will vote against the transfer of powers in connection with the natural-gas arrangements (which he actually supports). Yet with his left, he helps Likud avoid defeat on other issues, like the civil-union law sponsored by Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) or the marriage law proposed by Meretz leader MK Zehava Galon.

To say that Lieberman is unpredictable is a cliché. Until now, he was unpredictable as an integral part of the government; now he’s creating confusion and turmoil from his new position outside, which he seems to be enjoying. Until he gets bored; then get ready for surprises.

No far-reaching conclusions need to be drawn from the agreement reached by Lieberman and Hanegbi about the Judicial Appointments Committee. This is not the silver platter on which Lieberman will enter the coalition. It’s just a common-sense deal that serves both sides.

Likud and Habayit Hayehudi – whose representative, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, heads the committee – sought a way to retain their veto power over the appointment of Supreme Court justices (three of whom will retire by mid-2017). To that end, they had to ensure that three of the committee’s nine members would be right-wingers. Under the custom by which the coalition votes for the representative who has been agreed upon by the opposition – they would have ended up with MK Ofer Shelah (Yesh Atid), or with Zionist Union’s Tzipi Livni, Merav Michaeli or even Isaac Herzog. Who needs that kind of trouble?

Lieberman would have had to be a dunce to reject the tempting deal offered by Hanegbi, by which Yisrael Beiteinu’s Robert Ilyatov would become the opposition member of the committee. Until not long ago, Yisrael Beiteinu held key positions in the constitutional-judicial-parliamentary realm: chairmanship of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, and representation on the Judicial Appointments Committee and at the top of the Ministry of Public Security. Now, with his party in the opposition and devoid of influence, Lieberman was offered a chance to return to the glory days, at least up to a point. Could he refuse?

Lieberman and Hanegbi know that the success of the move depends primarily on the 10 members of Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party. Kahlon is presenting himself as the most zealous guardian of the Supreme Court. Most of Kulanu’s MKs are thought, at least according to their collective posture, to favor a different member of the opposition sitting on the committee – not one from Lieberman’s party. The vote in the Knesset will be secret, so they can vote according to their conscience if they wish.

Courting Ashkenazi

Last week, this column reported on a meeting between former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi – who’s awaiting a decision by the attorney general about whether to press charges against him in the “Harpaz affair,” involving a forged document – and businessman Hillel Kobrinsky, a confidant of Yesh Atid leader MK Yair Lapid. Subsequently, it turned out that the two are old friends. The lunch they had together in a trendy restaurant is routine for them.

What else has emerged? That Ashkenazi is in close contact with Lapid himself. They meet regularly, every week or two, and talk politics. Lapid wants Ashkenazi to be his No. 2, and his candidate for defense minister in the next election – assuming the latter is not indicted first.

Lapid is trying to persuade Ashkenazi with various arguments, such as:

1. The Labor Party, which Ashkenazi is thought to prefer, is a sick institution that devours its leaders. So, joining it is political suicide.

2. The new Labor has veered sharply leftward, whereas Yesh Atid is a classic centrist party. (Lapid is being careful not to budge a millimeter from the consensus of the “soft right.”) Ashkenazi will feel perfectly at home there.

3. It’s ostensibly easier for Labor to form a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, parties, but only ostensibly – because Lapid is going to great pains to moderate his approach to the public that saw him, in the last government, as a combination of Amalek and Antiochus, with gel. In other words, to be elected prime minister, the bold warrior against the Haredim is even willing to wear a shtreimel.

An informed source in Yesh Atid confirmed that Ashkenazi is at the top of the party leader’s list of acquisitions for the next election. “No one knows whether Ashkenazi’s market value is what it once was, but if we can prevent him from joining Labor – we’ll go out of our way to get him to join us,” the source said.

Waxing poetic

Last Thursday, Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the cyber campus in Be’er Sheva, a technology park with a growing number of cyber-security firms. He was accompanied by Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine. People on the tour were amazed at the honor the veteran editor was accorded. A quick search on Google produced a possible answer. Last January, after it became known that Netanyahu was planning to speak in Congress against the nuclear agreement with Iran, Forbes published an article describing the prime minister as “the Churchill of our time.” Well, it doesn’t take more than that to win Netanyahu’s undying love.

Another participant in the tour was Economy Minister Aryeh Dery, who arrived from a trip to locales bordering on the Gaza Strip. The frostiness between him and Netanyahu cooled the cyber ardor. This was a few hours after Dery declared that he would demand changes in the natural-gas plan (infuriating Netanyahu and his aides), and a few days after the blow he inflicted on Netanyahu in the Knesset by refusing to sign off on the plan. At the height of that nightmarish evening in the Knesset, the two got into a major squabble (described here last week), which ended with Dery stalking out of the Knesset.

The Shas leader apparently felt uncomfortable after all these incidents and sought a way back into Netanyahu’s good graces before the next cabinet meeting. So on Friday, just before Shabbat, he wrote a Facebook post about the weekly Torah portion – regarding the attempts by Balak son of Zippor to annihilate the people of Israel. With far-reaching verbal acrobatics, Dery quickly cut to the main issue: the Entebbe operation of 1976.

“On Shabbat [July 4],” he wrote, “we will mark the 39th anniversary of Operation Jonathan, named for Jonathan (Yoni), of blessed memory, who with heroism and courage saved the lives of dozens of Israelis and Jews in an enemy land and strengthened Israeli deterrence in an awe-inspiring operation.” Dery continued to heap praises on Netanyahu’s late brother, not forgetting to mention his own late spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who gave the prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, “backing” for his decision to go ahead with the daring plan to free the hostages.

Then came the heart of the matter: “Yesterday I toured communities around Gaza and then joined Prime Minister Netanyahu for a visit to the cyber campus in Be’er Sheva. The campus was established with the vision of the prime minister, who made a strategic decision to establish this cyber protection center, which will protect electrical, aviation, banking and other national systems.”

Enough honey? There’s more: “When called for, I have good words for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is following in the path of his brother Yoni,” Dery waxes poetic. “The premier understands the strategic importance of long-term protection for Israel’s citizens. He, too, like Yoni of blessed memory, grasped the challenges.”

Dery ends the post with an emotional, personal appeal, almost an imperative, to Netanyahu: “Go on ensuring Israel’s security,” he encourages him, “and with God’s help, we will act and succeed.”

As we know, no one was ever slapped for flattery. But a sycophantic, boot-licking show like this, divorced from all context or logic, leaves flattery groveling in the dust.

Cloudy transparency

The birth this week of a parliamentary committee for “accessibility of government information and the public service,” better known as the “transparency committee,” would not get a mention here were it not for the disproportionate attention and the distinctly non-transparent ordeals that accompanied its establishment.

First, a reminder: Haaretz reported early in June that Zionist Union, which was supposed to chair the subcommittee on refugees and foreign workers, decided to forgo that honor and instead to establish a new subcommittee – on transparency. The move was sponsored by MK Stav Shaffir, who was to head the new body. Apparently the tens of thousands of foreign workers without rights who look after our elderly, build our homes, wash our dishes in restaurants, pick crops in our fields or have just fled to us across Sinai before dying in war, of hunger or under torture – are not a sexy enough subject. They may be invisible, but they are not sufficiently “transparent.” That’s the whole difference.

The coalition leaped at the opportunity to jump into the fray. In the previous Knesset, the committee on foreign workers, headed by MK Michal Rozin (Meretz), was a pain in the neck for the government.

After the June 2 report in Haaretz, nothing happened. The idea of the new panel threatened to undercut two other MKs: Nissan Slomiansky (Habayit Hayehudi), who heads the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, and, in particular, Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism), head of the Science and Technology Committee. They raised obstacles, and the formation of the transparency committee was delayed time and again.

In the meantime, the bored Shaffir looked for something to do. She drove party leader Herzog crazy, and he in turn did the same to Netanyahu, the Knesset Speaker and others. Finally, Netanyahu had enough. He instructed coalition chairman Tzachi Hanegbi to strike a deal and get Herzog off his back.

This week, Hanegbi undertook a Kissinger-style diplomatic shuttle mission between Shaffir, Maklev and Slomiansky, which produced a detailed document defining the areas of jurisdiction among the three, as though it were an agreement on the division of Germany after World War II. The bottom line: Shaffir promises not to encroach on the territory of Maklev, who in turn undertakes not to anger Netanyahu, a well-known champion of transparency, with issues of importance to the prime minister. Slomiansky also signed, under the belief that his powers and standing will not suffer. No precedent is known of a committee head having to sign a similar document.

The involvement of such senior figures in this story astonished people in Habayit Hayehudi and Likud. And meanwhile, in Zionist Union, not everyone is happy about the party’s abandonment of the foreign workers. MK Nachman Shai fired off an angry email to Herzog, asking why the handling of this minor committee was done clandestinely, and who in blazes gave the order to forsake the foreign workers. Some in the Labor Party think that Herzog went out of his way for Shaffir only to distance her from his rival, MK Shelly Yacimovich. Herzog denies this vehemently. “That’s a dirty lie,” he said, adding, “There are no camps in the party.”