Netanyahu said to threaten Gantz with new elections in tiff over budget

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened Blue and White leader Benny Gantz that Israel will go to fresh elections if the government fails to pass the budget he plans to present in the next few weeks, Israeli television reported Friday.

Under the coalition deal between Netanyahu’s Likud and Blue and White, the parties agreed to pass a two-year budget. Netanyahu, however, is now seeking a one-year budget amid the coronavirus pandemic, potentially allowing him to call new elections while remaining prime minister if the move is blocked.

According to Channel 12 news, Netanyahu has told associates he’s “determined” to bring a budget covering only the remainder of 2020 for government approval on the week beginning July 12.

“I had intended to present a budget in another week,” the associates quoted him as saying. “If [Blue and White] want to go to elections that’s their problem.”

Blue and White officials dismissed the comments attributed to Netanyahu as “spin.”

“We’re tired of the spin by Netanyahu, who at every moment wants to change the [coalition] deal,” unnamed party members told the network. “We’re continuing to stand for our demand.”

The report came a day after Channel 12 said Netanyahu threatened new elections during a cabinet meeting, incensed by Gantz’s call for further handling of the pandemic response to be shifted to the Defense Ministry.

PM Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on June 21, 2020. (Marc Israel Sellem/POOL)

During the three consecutive national elections over the past year — the last of which saw Gantz join with Netanyahu’s Likud in a move that led the Yesh Atid and Telem factions to split off from Blue and White — Israel was left with a caretaker government unable to pass a budget for 2020, making the passage of one a top priority of the new government.

Budget discussions are the most contentious of any coalition, and with the failure to pass a budget resulting in the automatic calling of new elections, Netanyahu has in recent years pushed for a two-year budget to reduce the chances of his governments falling.

With budget negotiations expected to be especially difficult in the current unity government due to the inclusion of parties from both the right and the left, Likud and Blue and White included in their coalition agreement a commitment “to pass, in an orderly manner, a biennial state budget for 2020 and 2021.”

But citing the rise in coronavirus cases and the uncertainty surrounding the economy, lawmakers from Netanyahu’s bloc within the government have in recent days been touting a…