Coalition secures Knesset panels
The coalition on Monday succeeded in passing the makeup of 11 Knesset committees that favor their parties at the expense of the opposition.
After a stormy meeting of the Knesset Arrangements Committee, 17 MKs voted in favor of the proposal and 13 were opposed.
* The Knesset House Committee will be headed by Nir Orbach (Yamina)
* The Finance Committee by Alex Kushnir (Yisrael Beytenu).
* The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee – Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid).
* The Economy Committee – Michael Biton (Blue and White).
* The Interior Committee – Saeed Alharomi (Ra’am).
* The Labor and Social Affairs Committee – Efrat Rayten (Labor)
* The Education Committee – Sharren Haskel (New Hope)
* The Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee – Yair Golan (Meretz)
The State Control, Women’s Advancement and Science and Technology committees will be headed by opposition MKs still to been named by their factions.
The coalition intends to split the Interior Committee and create one new committee in charge of public security that will be chaired by Merav Ben-Ari (Yesh Atid) and another in charge of religious affairs that will be chaired by Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beytenu).
A new health committee will split off from the Labor and Social Affairs Committee and will be chaired by Coalition Chairwoman Idit Silman (Yamina).
The opposition protested the coalition giving itself a significant majority on key committees like finance, while giving the opposition more MKs on the Science and Technology and Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs committees. The committee’s legal adviser, Arbel Asterchan said she would not raise such a proposal.
The opposition threatened a near boycott of the committees and the heads of opposition factions said they would send only one MK to each committee to file amendments.