Three no-confidence motions, proposed by NRP/National Union. Likud, and Meretz, were each roundly defeated on Monday afternoon.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government enjoyed an outright majority in each vote, while less than 30 MKs supported dismantling the government in each vote.
The Labor party did not support the no-confidence motions, though many MKs ducked the issue by abstaining.
Labor party members roundly slammed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the wake of last week’s publication of the interim report on the Winograd Commission’s findings in its probe of the government’s performance during the Second Lebanon War.
The Prime Minister was severely criticized in the report, which pinpointed him as the key person responsible for the mismanagement of the war against Hizbullah terrorists last summer.
Despite numerous calls by Labor party members for Prime Minister Olmert’s resignation, however, only Minister-Without-Portfolio Eitan Cabel actually “walked the walk”, quitting his post when the Prime Minister refused to leave his.
Nonetheless, MK Cabel now says he will abstain from a vote to bring down the government Monday evening – and a slew of his party colleagues plan to do the same.
But regardless of what Knesset members think about the prime minister, most do not want new elections now, and the Olmert administration is expected to survive the no-confidence motions.
Knesset Member Avishai Braverman, former president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, said Monday morning he probably will abstain in the no-confidence votes against the government scheduled for the evening.
"Olmert must go," he told Voice of Israel government radio, but he explained there is a "technical problem" because he is against new elections now.
MK’s Shelly Yechimovich and Ofir Pines-Paz left open the possibility that they would decide to vote against the government, but backed down in the end.
MK Ami Ayalon, a leading contender against party chairman Amir Peretz in the upcoming Labor primaries, declined to state his position.
Education Minister Yuli Tamir firmly said she would support the prime minister’s bid to hang on to the government, however, telling a Labor faction meeting “the principle that we dictate to another party who their leader should be is unprecedented. It is dangerous, governmental anarchy.”
Kadima Knesset Members are Divided on the Vote
MK Avigdor Yitzhaki, who also made good on his vow to quit as coalition chairman if the Prime Minister did not step down, abstained on the votes.
Kadima MK Michael Nudelman, Chairman of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, said he would support the government. MK Nudelman was promptly yanked back into line by Prime Minister Olmert after he called for him to step down last Wednesday.
Within two hours of his initial announcement, MK Nudelman rescinded his call for the Prime Minister’s ouster. Political sources reported the Prime Minister threatened to take away the MK’s chairmanship if he didn’t retract the statement.