Deep in the midst of trying to set up a new government, Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu met with the outgoing cabinet on Sunday, heaped praise on its work,
and said he hoped the new ministers would follow its example.
Two of
Shas’s four ministers stayed away from the meeting, apparently as a protest that
their party will be kept out of the next government.
Netanyahu heaped
praise on the ministers present, saying the government will – with time – be
remembered as one that achieved more of its aims than almost any other in the
history of the state.
The outgoing government “brought Israel to a
position where it is more secure and prosperous, and has made more progress in
all the areas in which we have been active,” the prime minister
said.
What made the feat more impressive, Netanyahu continued, was that
it was done at a time when “the world around us was changing for the worse; the
regional situation is changing for the worse, and the global economy is wobbly
and unstable.”
The challenges the country still faced, in addition to
“tremendous” security challenges, were bringing down the cost of living and
housing, and equalizing the the military and tax burden, Netanyahu
said.
He added that there was no word other than “tremendous” to
characterize the country’s security challenges, which were “piling up around us,
and we will of course need to deal with that in the next
government.”
Netanyahu took the opportunity of what he said was likely
the last meting of the government to praise Minister- without-Portfolio Bennie
Begin. Netanyahu ridiculed the notion that ministers without portfolios did not
do anything, saying Begin was the best “minister without portfolio” the country
has ever had. He said he wished that some of the ministers in the country’s
history who had held portfolios would have done as much as Begin, and would have
acted with as much “wisdom and morality.”