Tensions between Likud and Labor have erupted in the Knesset Finance Committee, casting a shadow on overall cooperation between the two coalition partners.
Likud members of the Knesset’s Finance Committee threatened Monday to join forces with the religious parties against Labor, in order to approve aid to interests affiliated with the Likud.
This development took place in retaliation for a deal Labor struck Sunday with the religious parties and the Citizens Rights Movement to pass, over Likud’s objections, an aid package for financially troubled kibbutzim.
Likud Knesset member Ariel Weinstein complained to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that by doing so, Labor had violated the “formal, written agreement to pass all aid together, and not piecemeal.”
Weinstein blamed Finance Minister Shimon Peres for the development. He charged that Peres had maintained a distance from the committee’s proceedings and “sent his young troops to do his dirty work for him, so that he could later deny any knowledge of what went on.”
Knesset member Haim Ramon of Labor rejected Weinstein’s charges and warned that “if there is no coalition in the Finance Committee, then there cannot be a coalition in the Knesset or government either.”
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