The Knesset will begin work again next week after a temporary Knesset House
Committee was formed to allow lawmakers to get back to business.
Acting
Knesset Speaker Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) called Knesset meetings for Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday, in which new MKs will give their first speeches and
ministers in the outgoing government will give an overview of their
activities.
“I’m satisfied with the plenum’s speedy return to activity
and that there will be a respectable platform to say farewell to departing
ministers and for exposure to new MKs to their peers in the Knesset and to the
public,” Knesset Secretary Yardena Maller-Horowitz said on Thursday, when the
heads of the 19th Knesset’s 12 factions met to form a temporary House Committee
that can authorize the plenum’s agenda.
The committee has 29 members and
is led by MK Ze’ev Elkin (Likud Beytenu), coalition chairman in the previous
Knesset.
The temporary House Committee can choose the temporary members
of two committees, Foreign Affairs and Defense and Finance, which can call
emergency meetings if necessary, until permanent committees are
formed.
In addition, after coalition agreements are signed and parties
agree on the makeup of the Knesset’s committee, the temporary House Committee
will bring it to a vote in the plenum.
Every faction with four or more
MKs will have at least one representative in the temporary House Committee, and
those with less than four can send observers to its meetings.
Meanwhile,
as parliamentary activity begins again, MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) formed the
first new caucus of the 19th Knesset.
Horowitz initiated a Caucus for
Regional Cooperation, which is meant to strengthen ties between Israel and its
neighbors in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean.
“Regional
cooperation is based first and foremost on diplomatic progress, but sprawls far
beyond treaties and has to do with all areas of life: Economics, commerce,
culture, the environment, research, media, health, tourism,” Horowitz
explained.
The Meretz MK said that cooperation in different fields
deepens treaties and ties between countries and nations, and is a necessary
means of promoting understanding and appeasement.
He added that the new
caucus is a way of expressing the desire of many MKs to cooperate with
neighboring countries for the welfare of all the citizens of the region.