Israel Railways workers with train
Israel Railways workers with trainFlash 90

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s new Chief of Staff Yoav Horovitz addressed the question of whether the Prime Minister would fire Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz over recent events involving work on the railway system on Shabbat.

“I don’t know if Netanyahu will fire Katz, but [Katz] lied to us,” Horovitz said in an interview with Army Radio.

“This whole issue, that the Transportation Minister is not working with transparency on an issue at the heart of his job, that he is hiding things from the Prime Minister – in the end, he is playing a political game on the backs of [train] passengers. This will not continue to happen.”

“This crisis will be solved, we will find a solution for passengers and soldiers and we will worry that the train returns to full functioning,” Horovitz said.

Sources in the Likud said on Saturday that there is a there a good chance that Netanyahu could fire Katz, in light of recent tensions surrounding work on Israel Railways on Shabbat.

The comments came after Netanyahu on Friday ordered the cancellation of all the infrastructure work that had been scheduled to take place on the Israel Railways over Shabbat, and ordered the parties involved to reach a solution on the matter within 72 hours.

In an unusually harsh statement, the Prime Minister’s Office accused Katz of trying to cause a coalition crisis with the haredi parties by ordering that the work be carried out on Shabbat.