Cartoonists and columnists are having a field day with the new Netanyahu government.
- It's not a government, it's shakshuka (a composite of eggs, tomato and spices, scrambled and fried).
- There's a Minister of Nothing, a Minister of Absolutely Nothing and a Minister to Count the Ministers.
We are seeing clips of a self-satisfied Netanyahu ridiculing Ehud Olmert from the podium of the Knesset in 2006 for wasting taxpayer money with a government inflated with useless ministerial appointments. Now, having appointed a government some 30 percent larger than Olmert's, Netanyahu is saying it's the price the public must pay for having voted the way it did in the recent election.
Not necessarily.
If Netanyahu had brought Kadima and Labor into his government with the Likud, he would not have had to invent appointments to satisfy claimants in his own party, after passing out so many goodies to all the other smaller parties he needed for a Knesset majority.
Explanations for the failure of negotiations between Netanyahu and Livni mention Livni's demand that the position of prime minister rotate between her and Netanyahu, and her demand that Netanyahu accept the formula of a "two state solution" as the goal of negotiations with the Palestinians.
It is hard to believe a few words caused the failure of those talks. Netanyahu and Ehud Barak agreed on a formula for resolving what were likely to be even wider differences on the peace process between the right-of-center Likud and the left-of-center Labor Party. We are left only with ego as the explanation for the failure of the Netanyahu-Livni negotiations. It is not clear whether it was Netanyahu's ego that prevented him from accommodating Livni's demands, or Livni's ego that prevented her from accepting what Netanyahu was willing to offer. Among politicians at that level, there's usually enough ego to explain anything. Harold Lasswell made the point in his Psychopathology and Politics, published in the mid-1930s.
Netanyahu has appointed politicians to the following positions, alongside the conventional posts of established ministries:
Minister for Intelligence Services Minister for Strategic Issues
Minister without Portfolio with Responsibility for Minorities
Minister without Portfolio with Responsibility for Improving Public Service
Minister for Information and the Diaspora
Minister for Regional Development and Development of the Negev and Galilee
3 Ministers without Portfolio, and without specified responsibilities
Deputy Minister for the Status of Youth and Women
Most likely none of these will have sufficient staff or budgets to accomplish anything of importance. There is also to be a Minister of Culture and Sport, which has so little to do that in the past it was part of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.
Prominent among Netanyahu's tasks was finding something for the distinguished individuals he recruited to the Likud shortly before the election. They may have enhanced the appeal of his ticket, and brought in some of the votes that boosted the Likud from the 14 seats won in 2006 to 27 seats this time around.
He gave Moshe Ya'alon, former commander of the IDF general staff, the title Minister for Strategic Issues. Chances are slim that Ya'alon will succeed in getting responsibility for anything within the purview Defense Ministry, to be headed by Ehud Barak, another former commander of the IDF general staff, with a Deputy Minister of Defense who is also a retired general.
Netanyahu gave Dan Meridor, a distinguished former minister of finance and justice the title Minister for Intelligence Services. Meridor will have trouble acquiring anything like control over the formidable Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), especially when the Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Minister of Domestic Security also want their hands in those pies.
He gave the title of Minister for Regional Development and Development of the Negev and Galilee to his Likud rival, Sivan Shalom. Shalom might have trouble deciding about regional development while the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Defense Minister consider that to be in their bailiwicks, or the development of the Negev and Galilee that is already handled by numerous established ministries..
Netanyahu's ridicule of Olmert for wasting money with so many appointments in 2006 holds some water, but not too much. As noted above, few appointments of doubtful value will come with significant staff assistance. The differences between the salary of a Knesset member and minister, or deputy minister, and the addition of car and driver has been estimated as between two and three million shekels per year, depending on whether the appointee can squeeze any money for aides or activities out of the finance ministry. Altogether, we may be talking NIS 50m. a year. Demagogues who didn't get any of the goodies may sound off about how many school teachers or free lunches for the poor this money might buy, but the aggregate is something like one hundredth of one percent of the national budget (i.e., .0001). If politicians really want to spend more on teachers or free lunches, they can find that amount without great difficulty.
What about the argument that some of the appointees are not experts in the subject matter of their jobs? This is true not only for ministers of nothing, but also ministers of something. Individuals appointed as Ministers of Defense and Justice are experts in the concerns of their departments. However, the Minister of Foreign Affairs will begin his task having insulted the President of Egypt, and with a reputation as a racist. The ultra-Orthodox politician likely to be heading the Ministry of Health, if he repeats the record of a predecessor, may be more interested in kosher kitchens than anything else. There is no indication that individuals appointed to head the ministries of transportation, environmental protection, tourism, or housing and construction come to their jobs with significant expertise in those fields.
Not to worry. All of the established ministries have numerous professional employees, who make almost all of the decisions, or guide the minister to appropriate decisions. Ministers of defense, foreign affairs and finance often have crucial roles in formulating and articulating major policy. The minister of transportation might have a crucial voice in selecting the route for new roads, or scrambling the choices made by a predecessor. The minister of education cannot do much of anything that goes against the desires of the teachers' unions. Most ministers find themselves restricted by whatever program initiatives professionals in the finance ministry are willing to pay for.
In wishing well to the new government of Israel, it is appropriate to hope that all will go well in the international economy that impinges so heavily on this small country, that moderate Palestinians will reconsider their rejection of whatever any Israeli government is willing to offer, that American and Europeans claiming to be our friends will keep their brilliant new ideas to themselves, and that our crazier neighbors will not decide to provoke the IDF.
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