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Likud MKs: Recording Shows Edelstein is Disconnected

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Knesset Members from the ruling Likud Party on Sunday blasted party colleague MK Yuli Edelstein, the Knesset speaker, for comments he made several weeks ago saying the party is in “serious trouble” and adding that the party’s Knesset representation would be better off if “half the MKs were not there.”

In a recording broadcast on the Israel Broadcast Corporation (Kan) Sunday morning, Edelstein can be heard criticizing Netanyahu’s “sourpuss” speech last summer, as well as criticizing the prime minister both for not appointing a full-time foreign minister and for an ongoing political feud with President Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin.

Response from Edelstein’s party colleagues did not take long to surface. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely rejected the notion that there is no full-time minister to oversee Israel’s foreign affairs, and said Edelstein’s claim that Netanyahu had failed to fully capitalize on US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel shows that Edelstein simply is uninformed about what is going on in the Ministry.

“Just last week, I asked (Foreign Minister Director General Yuval Rotem) when the last time the ministry had done any work on encouraging embassies to move to Jerusalem. He told me it was during the Oslo period, when the idea was for countries to open two embassies in the city – an embassy to the Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem, and one in western Jerusalem to Israel,” Hotovely said.

In contrast, Hotovely said a team of Ministry officials had begun work on capitalizing on the opportunity presented by the Trump declaration.

“It is the most serious work going on (in the Ministry) because we’ve never had such an impressive window of opportunity, where the world’s biggest and most important superpower, the United States, has lined up on Israel’s side on the Jerusalem issue,” Hotovely added.

MK Oren Hazan (Likud) was less polite in his criticism.

“To tell the truth, I was absolutely shaken (by hearing the tape,” Hazan told Kan, calling for an investigation into the tape. “You cannot (be allowed to get away with) say(ing) that the prime minister cannot run the country. He should hand back the keys and resign…He’s got some nerve.”

             (TPS)

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