Kitchen Cabinet of Israel

The Kitchen (Hebrew: המטבח‎‎, HaMitbah) or The Kitchen Cabinet (Hebrew: המטבחון‎‎, HaMitbahon, lit. The kitchenette) is a term used in Israeli politics to describe the collection of senior officials, or unofficial advisers to the Security Cabinet, as a narrow forum of 'Inner Security Cabinet', operating alongside the Security Cabinet, with the purpose of assisting it in formulating security assessments and policy, in preparation for debating and resolving these issues within the appropriate legal forums.

The first appearance of the term in Israel comes from the cooking activities associated with former Prime Minister Golda Meir's custom of calling such consultations on Shabbat evenings at her home, in preparation for her full Cabinet meetings the following day. Meir became known for her custom of serving the attendees with a cake that she had just baked, and thus the image of a debate around her kitchen table naturally arose. Also nicknamed "Golda's kitchen", it usually included Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon, Yisrael Galili, and Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, who were accompanied with various senior officials whenever required.

The Kitchen attendees praised it as a preliminary assessment apparatus, while its opponents have claimed it to be a manner of overriding the official governmental bodies.

Benjamin Netanyahu's first Cabinet, the twenty-seventh government, maintained such a forum which included: Netanyahu, Foreign Affairs Minister David Levy, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. The panel was nullified in 1997, after Ariel Sharon's nomination for the Minister of Finance post was taken into consideration and he demanded that he joined the kitchen, after receiving this position, a demand which caused David Levy to quit the kitchen.

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