Senior officials in the Likud party believe that party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu will not appoint a defense minister in the first stage of forming the government and will keep a number of government ministries in his hands in order to enable the future expansion of the government.
The sources told the Maariv newspaper: "There is a very high probability that Netanyahu intends to keep a package of portfolios for himself, including the defense portfolio as well as two or three medium-sized portfolios, which according to our estimates are the tourism, agriculture/economics and science portfolios, in order to create options for expanding the government down the road." . The Likud officials emphasized that "this is a possible expansion of the coalition which would not be at the expense of party members or bloc partners, but in addition to them."
In addition, according to the sources, opposition to the Norwegian law, which allows ministers to resign from the Knesset to allow other party members to become MKs, is growing among some Likud officials, arguing that it is a wasteful and unnecessary law. The officials are not calling for the cancellation of the Norwegian law at the moment, but to freeze it until the government stabilizes the economic situation.
Today (Sunday) Netanyahu will hold his first round of meetings with the heads of the parties of the future coalition - the Religious Zionism party, Shas and United Torah Judaism.
Due to Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir's vacation, there will be a meeting between him and Netanyahu tomorrow.