Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz talk in the Knesset during its inaugural session.
Posted on 01/04/2007 12:56:44 PM PST by SmithL
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to remove his defense minister, Amir Peretz, two TV stations reported Thursday.
Citing sources in Olmert's office, Israel TV and Channel 2 said Peretz would be asked to resign and take another cabinet position, and if he refused, he would be fired.
Olmert's spokesman, just before takeoff from Sharm e-Sheikh Thursday night, denied the Channel 2 report.
"Olmert has not decided to remove Peretz from his post and the issue has not even been discussed," he said.
Channel 2 speculated that Peretz would not be offered the finance portfolio, currently occupied by Avraham Hirschson from Olmert's Kadima Party.
Labor MK Eitan Cabel said his party would not accept the removal of members from the government or to different portfolios.
A Dahaf poll conducted for the Knesset Channel on Wednesday found that 45 percent of Israelis would appreciate Olmert more if he would remove Peretz from his post. Only four percent said they would not appreciate such a move.
Fifty-one percent of the respondents said Peretz's dismissal would not affect their judgment of the prime minister.
Twenty percent said they would like Olmert to dismiss IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, as opposed to six percent of participants who said firing the army chief would decrease their appreciation for the PM.
And when do they remove Olmert?
Good. Now he can remove himself.
Despite his unpoularity, he seems to have built a pretty stable parliamentary coalition. He might last till the next scheduled elections, three years I believe.
Or until Tel Aviv is nuked.
Finger to the wind spineless, duplicitous, dangerous, criminal and outright incompetent Pavlovian dog Olmert responds to the recent Israeli media poll reports.
My thoughts exactly.
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