Israeli government collapses, setting up 5th election in 3 years

JERUSALEM – Israel’s ruling coalition will dissolve Parliament before the end of the month, bring down the government and put the country in elections for the fifth time in three years, the prime minister said on Monday.

The decision has pushed Israel back into paralysis and thrown a political end to Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office just a year before forming the current government. Mr. Netanyahu is currently in court on allegation of corruption but has refused to leave politics, and his Likud party is leading in the polls.

Once Parliament formally votes to dissolve itself, it will bring the curtain down on one of the most ambitious political projects in Israeli history: an unwieldy eight-party coalition that unifies political opponents. from the right, left and center, and including the first independent Arabs. party joins an Israeli ruling coalition.

But that ideological diversity is also being destroyed.

The divergence between the coalition’s two ideological camps, combined with relentless pressure from Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, has led to the defection of two right-wing lawmakers – eliminating the coalition’s majority in Parliament. When a number of leftist and Arab lawmakers also rebelled over key votes, the coalition found it unable to govern.

The last straw was the inability of the government last week to collect enough votes to expand the two-tier legal system in the West BankThis has distinguished Israeli settlers from Palestinians since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.

Some Arab members of the coalition have refused to vote for the system, which must be renewed every five years. That prevented passage of the bill and prompted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former settler leader, to collapse the government and thus delay a final vote until after another election.

Mr. Bennett, 50, said in a televised address: “We have done everything we can to sustain this government, whose survival we consider to be in the national interest. “I’m sorry, our efforts were unsuccessful,” he added.

Scheduled to be held in the fall, the snap election will be Israel’s fifth since April 2019. It comes at an already fragile time for the country, after a increase in Palestinian attacks on the Israelites and escalating in a secret war between Israel and Iran. It also complicates diplomacy with Israel’s most important ally, the United States, as the new political crisis comes less than a month before President Biden’s first visit to the Middle East as head of state. nation.

Mr. Biden will be greeted by a caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, the current Secretary of State. The terms of the coalition agreement stipulate that if the government collapses because of a defection of the right, Mr Lapid, a former centre-right broadcaster, will take over as interim leadership from Mr. Bennett.

Mr Lapid will lead the government for at least a few months, through the election campaign and lengthy coalition negotiations likely to follow.

In a show of unity on Monday night, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid delivered successive speeches from the same stage, both praising the successes of a government difficult for many analysts. Didn’t expect it to last for a year.

The Enduring Coalition was formed last June after four inconclusive elections in two years left Israel without a state budget or a functioning government.

The members of the alliance have agreed to work together to end this paralysis, and because Their common desire is to overthrow Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to step down despite appearing in court on corruption charges alienated many of his right-wing allies, prompting some allies with ideological opponents to remove him from office.

The alliance is cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israel’s first company in more than three years, and made important administrative appointments. It strengthens Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration and deepens the country’s emerging ties with key Arab states.

Its leaders and supporters also praised it for showing that compromise and courtesy can still be made in a society deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.

“We have established a government that many believe is impossible – we created it to stop the terrible spiral that Israel is going through,” Mr. Bennett said in his speech.

“Together, we were able to pull Israel out of the pit,” he added.

However, the government was ultimately unable to overcome its contradictions.

Its members frequently clashed over the rights of Israel’s Arab minority, the relationship between religion and the state, and settlement policy in the occupied West Bank – conflicts that eventually resulted in two key members to eliminateand others to vote against government bills.

The new election offers Mr. Netanyahu another chance to win enough votes to form his own majority coalition. But his path back to power remains unclear.

Polls suggest his party, Likud, will easily become the largest party in the next Parliament, but its allies may not have enough seats for Mr. Netanyahu to win a parliamentary majority. Some parties may also agree to work with Likud only if Mr. Netanyahu resigns as party leader.

This dynamic could lead to months of protracted coalition negotiations, bringing Israel back The stalemate it fell into before Mr. Netanyahu leftwhen his government lacked the coherence to enact national budgets or fill key civil service positions, and the country held four elections in two years.

Through it all, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to remain on trial, a years-long process unaffected by a new election and likely to end only if he accepts the plea deal. , is found guilty or not guilty or if prosecutors withdraw the charges. Despite the promises of some coalition members, the outgoing government failed to pass a law barring a candidate with criminal charges from becoming prime minister.

Critics fear that Mr. Netanyahu will use his return to office to pass laws that could impede prosecution, a charge he has denied.

In a video published on social media on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu celebrated the government’s decision and criticized its record.

“This evening is great news for the people of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

“This government has ended its path,” he added. “A government dependent on supporters of terrorism, has given up the right to personal security of Israeli citizens, has raised the cost of living to unprecedented highs, has imposed unnecessary taxes, endanger our Jewish entity. This government is going home.”

Palestinian Israeli legislators celebrated the fall of the government for reasons of protest – as they said they had done little to change the lives of Palestinians.

Aida Touma-Suleiman, an opposition lawmaker and member of Israel’s Palestinian minority, said in a statement: “This government implements an extreme right-wing policy of expanding settlements. , destroy houses and carry out ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories. It throws crumbs to the Arabs in exchange for concessions on basic political principles.”

Mr. Lapid, 58, heads Yesh Atid, the nation’s second-largest party. (Mr Netanyahu’s Likud is the largest.) After Mr. Netanyahu failed to gather a majority in the previous election in March 2021, Mr. Lapid was given the opportunity to form a government.

E ownership of the union.

A former journalist and popular TV presenter, Mr Lapid first joined Parliament and the government in 2013 as a surprise of that year’s electionbecame finance minister in the government led by Netanyahu.

Many Israelis have long viewed Mr. Lapid – a former amateur boxer – as politically light-hearted, especially in his handling of complex security issues, including countering nuclear ambitions. Iranian people. But since then, he has served as minister of finance, foreign affairs, strategic affairs and alternate prime minister, as well as leader of the opposition.

The son of Yosef Lapid, a former minister and Holocaust survivor, and Shulamit Lapid, a novelist, he expressed support for a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But to secure the support of Mr. Bennett, who opposes the Palestinian state, he agreed not to negotiate with the Palestinians on statehood for the duration of their alliance.

Gabby Sobelman Reporting contributions from Rehovot, Israel.