The Knesset will hold a special session on Thursday to swear in the new members, and will also take the opportunity to discuss the poverty report that was released today.
The Likud has designated the replacement for its outgoing MK, but replacements have not yet been found for the four recently-resigned Labor MKs.
Omri Sharon, who resigned from the Knesset earlier this month, will be replaced by former Likud MK David Mena (pictured). The resignation came several weeks after Sharon left the Likud, with his father, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to form the Kadima Party. It also followed, by several weeks, his plea of guilty to having violated campaign finance laws and of lying under oath. Deliberations on Sharon Jr.'s sentence began today. The Prosecution has asked for three years of jail time, while acknowledging that his convict's father's coma might overshadow the request.
In Labor, four MKs have recently resigned - three for political reasons, and one because the crimes of which he was recently convicted were deemed to be of the "morally shameful" type. The first three are Shimon Peres, Dalia Itzik and Chaim Ramon - new Kadima Party members all - who learned that they might legally lose their right to run for Knesset if they did not resign. The fourth MK is Salah Tarif, the first Druze to serve as a Cabinet minister, who was convicted of taking a bribe and breach of trust, and resigned the Knesset yesterday.
The Labor Party is not yet sure who will replace them. The next-in-line on the party's list of candidates, formulated before the last election in 2003, are former MKs Weizmann Shiri, Avi Yechezkel and Effie Oshaya, followed by Shmuel Abuav. Shiri and Yechezkel have already announced that they will take the job, while Oshaya and Abuav, who now serves as the Housing Ministry's Director-General, have said no. The next in line, #27 on the list - Tova Ilan, of the left-wing religious-Zionist Meimad movement - has said yes, but Ronen Tzur, #28, has said no. This leaves a woman named Shula Cohen; her answer has not yet been ascertained.
The new MKs will serve - and receive full salaries - until April 17, when the 17th Knesset will be sworn in, even though no regular Knesset activities are scheduled. Tova Ilan, the founder and president of the Yaakov Herzog Center for Jewish Studies in Kibbutz Ein Tzurim, told Arutz-7 today that she would donate her salary "to a worthy cause, of the type in which I am already involved - improving relationships between religious and secular Jews, and the like."
Ilan said that she decided to accept the job "because I saw that problems were being caused by people who didn't want to; after all, there have to be 120 MKs, so I decided not to cause problems and just take the job. I know that there won't be any real Knesset work, but in any event, it’s just a continuation of the public works in which I am already involved."
The spokesman for the Labor Knesset faction told Arutz-7 that the new MKs will not be assigned to any Knesset committees - even though some of the committees will be holding sessions in the coming weeks leading up to the election. He said that MKs-to-be Shiri and Yechezkel had also said they would donate part of their salaries to worthy causes. A final decision on the identity of the new MKs is to be made by the party on Wednesday.
Soon-to-be-MK Tova Ilan is active in promoting pluralism in religious-Zionist thought, and has received several awards - including the Avi Chai Foundation award, the Liberman Prize for Education, the Agerst Prize for Jewish Culture, the "Beyachad" Prize for work in bringing different ethnic communities closer together, and more. She received an honorary PhD from Bar-Ilan University in 2000, and was honored that same year by the State of Israel with kindling a torch in the annual Independence Day celebration, in recognition of her activities to increase tolerance and understanding between different sectors of the population. Between 1961-1972, she was principal of the Shafir Regional comprehensive high school.
Mrs. Ilan serves on many committees and forums, among them the Steering Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Orthodox Women, the Forum for the Advancement of Tolerance and Pluralism in Religious Education, the Council of Governmental Religious Education, and the "Yachad" Council [Relations between Ultra-Religious, Religious and Secular Jews], sponsored by the President of Israel.