The Bayit Yehudi will not support the budget unless the coalition passes the party's bill requiring a referendum on any peace agreement in which Israel gives up land, a senior party source said Monday.
Bayit Yehudi leader Economy Minister Naftali Bennett plans to call for a referendum in the party's faction meeting Monday afternoon.
Bennett told a senior party source earlier Monday that "this is a moral, principled demand. Our first goal is to prevent a rupture in the nation." The Bayit Yehudi source pointed out that the Referendum Bill, which would turn the existing referendum law into a Basic Law, is part of the party's coalition agreement.
Meanwhile, coalition officials are working on a way to start voting on the Referendum Bill as soon as possible and hope to call an emergency meeting of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation as soon as Monday.
The move may face a dead end, however, because Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the chairwoman of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, strongly opposes the Referendum Bill.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post in May, Bennett said he had not given up hope on passing a bill that would grant constitutional weight to the legal requirement for a referendum before giving up land under Israeli sovereignty.
Bayit Yehudi suffered a political setback after Yesh Atid decided not to support the immediate passage of a bill that would upgrade the referendum requirement to the status of a Basic Law. Without the backing of Yesh Atid there is no majority for the bill, even though it had the support of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Under the law Bayit Yehudi hoped to upgrade – which was passed by the 18th Knesset – either a special majority or a national referendum would be required in order to hand over annexed territories or land in pre-1967 Israel in the framework of a peace agreement.
Bennett said he had given a lot of thought to the purpose and concept of a referendum and determined that it would be very important on an issue as important as withdrawing from land. He said that the Oslo II agreement passed by a single vote – that of an MK who shifted to the Left from the Right in return for his appointment as a deputy minister.
“I think it would be a disaster to have a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel, while other coalition parties disagree,” the Bayit Yehudi chairman said. “A referendum is the way to deal with that.”
Previously, Bayit Yehudi had said they would not support the 2013 budget in the Knesset unless construction projects in West Bank settlements were fully funded.
If Netanyahu can’t pass a budget, his government falls and new elections are called.
Netanyahu’s 68-member coalition won’t have enough votes to pass the budget without Bayit Yehudi’s 12 mandates.