Two days ago, and a week after MK Silman announced her abandonment of the coalition, the heads of the various factions in the government met to discuss its future stability, with right-wing members lamenting the lack of discipline.
According to a report on Kan Reshet Bet, MK Sharren Haskel (New Hope) addressed the meeting, saying, "If we want things to work, we have to bring our MKs into line. We can't have this situation where people complain about every little thing. We can't allow coalition discipline to be breached like this. If we carry on this way, the coalition is not going to survive."
MKs Michal Rozin (Meretz) and Ram Shefa (Labor) both echoed Haskel's views: "We have red lines, ideological red lines. Our MKs aren't playing games," they said.
MK Nir Orbach, the new chairman of the Yamina party, responded to Rozin and Shefa, saying, "You have to realize that we're in different situations. Your voters want you in the coalition. Our voters don't."
Haskel then interjected, "We can continue living in la-la-land, and in another three weeks, we won't be sitting here."
MK Waleed Taha, the chairman of the United Arab List (Ra'am), chose not to attend the meeting; he has been boycotting meetings of the coalition chairmen for the past few weeks, even prior to Silman's defection.
Replacing Silman as coalition chair is MK Boaz Toporovsky of the Yesh Atid party. In an interview on Kan Reshet Bet, he said, "My estimation is - and we're operating based on this - that we're going to have a majority for most [Knesset] votes." He added that efforts were being made to ensure that coalition MKs would enable this.
Asked if coalition members were in contact with Knesset members from the (predominantly Arab) Joint List, Toporovsky replied, "We are constantly working to ensure coalition stability, and that includes cooperating with Knesset members in general on specific laws that are important to them, for the benefit of the country."
Toporovsky added that in his opinion, the Yamina party should declare not just MK Amichai Chikli but also MK Idit Silman defectors. "The moment that someone starts working against his party, he should be declared a defector. Chikli and Silman are members of the Yamina party. In Yesh Atid, something like that would never happen."