Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu temporarily averted a crisis within his coalition on Wednesday, when Yesh Atid succumbed to his request to delay bringing a bill granting tax benefits to gay parents to a Knesset vote.
Yesh Atid had previously said it would violate agreements with the Likud and Bayit Yehudi and bring the controversial bill to a vote Wednesday after Netanyahu vetoed Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid's choice to head the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Ofer Shelah.
Yesh Atid agreed Wednesday to wait a week before bringing the bill to a vote.
Prior to Yesh Atid's decision to hold back on the gay parents' bill on Wednesday, a Likud source said that “the coalition crisis is real.”
“Lapid is breaking deals because he took the committee chairmanship issue personally. He will find out things cannot be done this way.”
Yesh Atid officials had said the gay-benefits bill would be watered down “and made pareve” so the Likud and Bayit Yehudi could support it, but Likud sources said “that would not make the bill kosher” and that the two parties, together with haredi and Arab factions, would vote against it and prevent its passage.
If Yesh Atid eventually brings the benefits bill to a vote, the Likud will raise even more controversial legislation that MK Ya’acov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) has proposed: requiring the support of 80 MKs to withdraw from any portion of municipal Jerusalem. Yesh Atid vigorously opposes that bill, but it may have a majority to pass in both the plenum and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.