The legislative war of attrition between the coalition and the opposition continues this week with a new bill submitted by the Kadima party. The proposed law would prevent any sitting Knesset member who defected from his party from joining the 
Opposition members say the law would prevent opportunistic party-hopping strictly for the sake of power.
government in a ministerial or deputy ministerial role. Opposition members say the law would prevent opportunistic party-hopping strictly for the sake of power.
The bill was initiated by Kadima MKs Shlomo Molla and Majalli Whbee, they said, in order to block the ruling coalition from bribing sitting Knesset members with government roles in order to weaken opposition parties. In the bill's explanatory notes, it is said that the legislation would prevent factional divisions that were not strictly ideological in nature.
The explanatory notes further declare that the bill comes to remedy a lack of public faith in its politicians due to the repeating phenomenon of factional splits in recent years. Voters are forced to suspect that Knesset members representing their party will abscond with their votes and form another faction, with differing interests. This state of affairs "has seriously damaged party stability, as well as the stability of the entire political system," the Kadima MKs proposal said.
The Kadima party itself was the product of just such a split in 2005, when former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally left the Likud party in mid-legislative-session, taking several other MKs from his party and from the Labor party with him. The primary impetus for the split was so that Sharon could carry out his Gaza-Samaria Disengagement plan, in which 10,000 Jews were evicted from their homes for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority, with the unqualified support of like-minded politicians.
The new bill preventing political defectors from taking up government roles is seen inside and outside the party as a tool to prevent Sha'ul Mofaz and several other Kadima MKs from jumping ship and joining the Likud and the Netanyahu administration. Mofaz started his political career in the Likud party and subsequently defected to join Kadima under Sharon.
An apparently competing bill, dubbed the "Mofaz Law", was submitted in May of this year by Likud MKs. That legislation would amend the existing minimum number of party defectors required to form a new recognized Knesset faction. Under the current law, a breakaway group needs to comprise at least one third of the original faction, while the Likud bill would allow any seven MKs to break away from their faction and create a new one.
For MK Mofaz, this would ease his exit from Kadima. Currently, to form his own faction he'd need to recruit at least nine MKs among the 28-member Kadima representatives, which political pundits doubt he can muster. However, there is already speculation that seven Kadima MKs are prepared to leave the party if Mofaz makes his move.
The latest bill, of course, would affect the calculations of those Kadima MKs seeking a reward for their defection with MK Mofaz in the form of ministerial or deputy ministerial posts.