Meretz leaders attack ministerial decision to add settlements to national preferences list

Gal-On calls the moves "a targeted effort to prevent the peace efforts and reveals a contempt for the rule of law."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On with activists 370 (photo credit: DANIELLE ZIRI)
Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On with activists 370
(photo credit: DANIELLE ZIRI)
Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On called on the Knesset's Attorney General to investigate the ministerial decision to approve preferential status for settlements on Sunday.
"The decision to include settlements, whose legal status are clouded by doubt, to the map of national preferences, is a targeted effort to prevent the peace efforts and reveals a contempt for the rule of law," Gal-On said in a press release.
She also worried that the government's decision "encourages the settlers to continue to violate the law and take charge of the facts on the ground."
In attacking the coalition's move, Gal-On reserved a few choice words for Finance Minister Yair Lapid, saying that the middle class he promised to represent in government live in peripheral cities such as Ashkelon and Ashdod, and not in the settlements.
"Lapid has broken all of his promises, except for one promise which he has kept diligently - his promise to (Naftali) Bennett and the interests of the settlers."
MK Aisaoi Farij, a fellow Meretz member, echoed Gal-On's sentiments in his own press release where he questioned his faith in prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
"How can we trust Bibi when on one side he declares a renewal of the peace talks, but then under the table he and Lapid continue to send more and more money to the settlements?" Farij said.