The law that cancels the ability of four MKs to break away from an existing party passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum on Thursday morning, marking a small step forward in the first of four laws that the incoming coalition is racing to pass before Likud chairman MK Benjamin Netanyahu's mandate to form a government expires on Wednesday. The ability for four MKs to break away from a party was enacted by the previous Knesset in an attempt to tempt members of the Likud to break away from their party.
"The government and the previous Knesset's sole desire was to break up the Likud or create some kind of crisis among its members, but it was unsuccessful," one of the law's authors, Likud MK Yoav Kisch, said during the debate.
"It is clear to everyone that this was a simple, cheap political attempt to create some kind of conflict, that did not happen and will not happen," Kitsch said.
The cancellation of the law "gave a message of the beginning of a new Knesset," Kisch said in a previous debate yesterday.
Source Jpost/ Photo YONATAN SINDEL, FLASH90