Lapid and Poraz assure Sharon of Shinui's support for budget

[Lithos]

Shinui leaders Yosef Lapid and Avraham Poraz told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday night that they would back the 2005 state budget in the Knesset this week, assuring that it will pass and that the government will not fall.
At a three-hour meeting Saturday at Sharon's Sycamore Ranch, Lapid and Poraz agreed to back the budget in exchange for a budget transfer of NIS 700 million. The money is slated to go to students, recently released conscripts and reserves soldiers, cultural institutions and environmental causes.

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Please note: I am locking a post that violated I/P posting rules and will combine the replies into this thread.

[simcha_6]

Shinui agrees to vote for pull-out budget

Tony Lapid of the ultra-secular Shinui party met with Sharon on Sycamore Ranch and agreed to support the pullout budget in return for NIS 700 million going to higher education and other projects. (Ha'aretz at www.haaretzdaily.com). The pullout is getting steadily closer. Now a new election doesn't look to be necessary barring new developments. In the meantime, Ehud Barak talked with Mofaz arguing for a 6 day pullout plan that would shut down the entire country for a week, but make the pullout easier to enforce and hopefully less painful.

[bemildred]

1. Blackmail is not illegal when lawyers and politicians do it. See? nt

[simcha_6]

2. Not quite. What do you mean? n/t

[bemildred]

4. It sounds to me (ignorant though I am) as though Lapid extracted a high

price for his assent to Jabba's plan, and that he intends it to go
for something more worthy than guns and bombs and repression.
So I applaud that.

[simcha_6]

5. About Lapid and Shinui

I've heard some pro-Palestinians demonize Lapid and his party, but they put the pullout as their highest priority, and I'm a fierce secularist, so I sort of like them.

[bemildred]

6. I'm not much into demonizing things, although with some people

it is both a duty and a pleasure to annoy and criticize.
:-)

[Spinzonner]

3. Laws and Sausages