BICOM

Israel’s new public broadcaster will be up and running on Monday following an overnight Knesset vote.

The final vote of 43-33 followed a six hour debate that ran until 3am and resulted in the creation of a new public broadcaster and a separate news department.

The bill was presented by coalition chairman David Bitan from the Likud party: “In the framework of this bill, we examined a number of things, like the connection between the two corporations, how they’ll work as two corporations on one TV channel and how the budget is divided.”

This brings to a close years of debate and controversy over replacing the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), and the broader concern over creating more efficient public broadcasting. A month ago Finance Minister Kahlon and Prime Minister Netanyahu reached a compromise, putting an end to a coalition crisis and early calls for election.

The vote came hours after the IBA-run Israel Radio stopped broadcasting after 81 years. On Tuesday night, Channel 1’s nightly news broadcast also came to abrupt end after 49 years. The newscaster appeared visibly shaken as she made the announcement, being informed of the decision with only two hours’ notice.

A statement from the Prime Minister’s office has labelled the way in which IBA was closed “disrespectful”, and that “this was done neither by his hand nor his knowledge.”

Central to the debate over the last few months has been the issue of integrating IBA employees into in both the new corporation and the new news division. On this issue, Bitan said that a “large part” of employees “got special early retirement benefits, and some got jobs created for them in the civil service”.