Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit issued a legal opinion on Tuesday evening stating that Israel’s high-level security and coronavirus cabinets cannot hold votes until a justice minister is appointed, Channel 13 News reported. Mandelblit stated that until a minister is appointed, the two special cabinets will have to allow votes to be carried out by the full cabinet. His opinion is based on the fact that the failure to appoint a justice minister is in violation of the coalition agreement between Likud and Blue and White to maintain equal representation of both parties. The ruling comes on the background of a political squabble between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Ganz’s term as acting justice minister following the resignation of Avi Nissenkorn ended two weeks ago and he insisted that Netanyahu appoint a new minister but the prime minister has refused to do so. In return, Gantz refused to convene the coronavirus cabinet to approve a budget to purchase additional coronavirus vaccines, a move that has led to tensions with Pfizer after Israel failed to pay for the next pre-approved shipment. According to a Channel 13 News report, Netanyahu spoke with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about the delay in approving the budget and asked him to be patient due to the “political crisis.” Prior to the spat, the cabinet was scheduled to discuss approving a NIS 7 billion ($2.1 billion) budget to purchase additional coronavirus vaccines. Although almost all eligible Israelis have already been vaccinated and there are enough doses for the remaining unvaccinated Israelis above age 16, the purchase is meant to stock up for future needs, such as for children under 16, possible third doses, or vaccines for new variants. Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Chezy Levy said at the time. “There will definitely be a cost to this. I assume they’re turning to others and we could lose our place in line.” “The whole world is in an ‘arms race’ to purchase vaccines which are in short supply. Only recently we heard that Europe is attempting to restrict the export of vaccines to other countries. That’s why we want to purchase vaccines for the coming years, especially for next year.” “We need to be able to vaccinate 9 million citizens because we’re assuming that we also need to vaccinate children. And if we need to produce new vaccines against the variants, these also must be available. So we negotiated with several companies, and that is what we asked the government to approve.” “We did the same thing in mid-2020, when the pandemic was still in its infancy. During the first wave, we realized that vaccination would be the only answer, even though there were no eligible or approved vaccines at the time,” Levi concluded. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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