On Monday night, yet another adviser of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave their resignation, which makes this the third aide to have given their resignation in recent weeks. Previously, it was the premier’s diplomatic adviser and chief of staff who had resigned, as the future of the current government of Israel appears to be rather shaky. Naomi Session, the personal assistant and office chief of Naftali Bennett had worked for him since 2016 until her resignation. Bennett took to Twitter on Monday night and called her a tireless adviser. He said that she had been immensely helpful to him and he felt like a proud father who was excited for her because she was now moving towards new challenges.
In recent weeks, the Prime Minister’s Office has seen a number of advisers and close aides leave. Halfway through the previous month, the foreign affairs adviser, ShimritMeir announced that she was leaving her job on June 1st, a year after taking her post. She was regarded as one of the closes advisers of the prime minister but had been having clashes with some of the other advisers in the office. In fact, lawmakers who were part of the right and left sides of the government’s fragile coalition were also unhappy with her.
The coalition that forms the government is an amalgamation of the leftist, centrist and right-wing parties and also the Islamist Ra’am party. Since the factors are so different, it has become a major challenge to strike the right balance between them all after the government came into power in the previous year. This has gotten tougher in recent months, as things have grown unwieldy of late. The government lost its majority in the 120-seat Knesset after MK IditSilmanannounced that she was not going to support the coalition anymore and chose to defect.
Soon after, Bennett’s government had become a minority one when MK GhaidaRinawie-Zoabi of the Meretz party also announced her departure. Fortunately, she returned only a few days later after some negotiations. Next came Michel Biton, the Blue and White MK, who threatened the legislative ability of the coalition if his demands regarding transportation and agricultural reforms were not fulfilled. The premier was dealt another serious blow when Tal Gan-Tzvi, Bennett’s chief of staff, resigned in the previous week. Similar to Sasson, he had been a confidant of the premier for a long time.
As a matter of fact, he had led the negotiations for the 2021 coalition and had helped Bennett in forming the current government. According to a Yamina party source, Gan-Tzvi had been dealing with a lot of frustration while running the Prime Minister’s Office. He was the one who kept NirOrbach, the Yamina MK, in line and had dealt with resistance when trying to move the prime minister rightward. The ideological compromises that have to be made because of being part of the coalition have frustrated Orbach and he could potentially defect, especially now that Gan-Tzvi is no longer going to be present.