The vote in Israel’s Parliament on an offer by the Rothschild Group to underwrite an experimental educational television facility was deferred again last night.
The postponement resulted from a failure of the executive of the coalition parties represented in the Cabinet to come to a decision on whether to permit a free vote on the controversial proposal or to impose collective discipline on the coalition partners. At the last Cabinet meeting on Sunday, the National Religious Party and Achdut Avodah asked to be released from obligations to support the project and the Government referred that request to the coalition executive for a decision.
The coalition executive will now re-examine means of ending the legislative deadlock, It was assumed that if the action of the Government in accepting the Rothschild offer cannot muster a majority in the Knesset in a free vote, the coalition executive will invoke the disciplinary clause which binds all partners in the Cabinet to support a particular bill or to resign.
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