By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Kadima mocked the government on Tuesday for allowing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan to visit New York at the same time.
Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman met with US President Barack Obama and their counterparts from around the world, who had come for the United Nations General Assembly. Erdan went to the Big Apple for an important international environmental conference.
The cabinet secretary's office released a statement saying that Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon would fill in for Netanyahu during his absence.
Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is Barak's substitute.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon will temporarily take his boss's role, which might become his permanently if Lieberman is indicted in the upcoming months.
Environmental Protection Ministry spokesman Sharon Achdut said he "had no idea" whether anyone was filling in for Erdan.
"As long as so many ministers are in New York, they might as well move the weekly cabinet meeting there," said Kadima MK Majallie Whbee, a former deputy foreign minister. "If there were any benefit to the ministers going, I would understand it, but there isn't. Yet the ministers apparently prefer photo-ops in New York to the real work of the government in Jerusalem."
Netanyahu will return to Israel on Friday. All the ministers will be back by Sunday for Yom Kippur.