Kadima will retain control over the Knesset´s Science and Technology Committee, rather than upgrade to a committee considered more prestigious, party officials told coalition chairman Ze´ev Elkin (Likud) this week.

The coalition agreement between Likud and Kadima entitles Kadima to three Knesset committees. They already received control over the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which will be chaired by MK Ronnie Bar-On, and the Economics Committee, whose head will be chosen later this month.

Elkin offered Kadima to trade the Science and Technology Committee for either of two Likud-controlled committees: The Absorption, Immigration, and Diaspora Affairs Committee, headed by MK Danny Danon, or the Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women, which is chaired by MK Tzipi Hotovely.

But Science and Technology Committee chairwoman Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), who is close to Mofaz, chose to keep her current committee, which she described as fascinating.

There had been consideration among Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu´s loyalists of giving Kadima Danon´s committee to punish him for taking two steps last week that the prime minister did not like.

Danon angered Netanyahu by being the only Likud MK who voted against the coalition agreement with Kadima. He also refused Netanyahu´s request to not run against him for chairman of the Likud convention. (© 1995-2011, The Jerusalem Post 05/17/12)