JERUSALEM – Israeli lawmakers voted to dissolve Parliament on Thursday, topple the government, install a caretaker prime minister and send an exhausted voter to the polls for a fifth time in less than a year. four years.
The vote will give Benjamin Netanyahu, the former right-wing prime minister and current leader of the opposition, a chance to regain power. But while polls show Mr Netanyahu’s party, Likud, will remain the largest party in Parliament, they also suggest that his broader right-wing coalition could still struggle to form a coalition. majority vote – prolonging Israel’s political deadlock and increasing the likelihood of another election in 2023.
Mr. Netanyahu is currently corruption trialand his health for office is likely to once again frame the election, set for November 1, as a referendum on his character.
Israel will be led through an election campaign by an interim prime minister, Yair Lapid, a central broadcaster turned legislator, who is scheduled to take over at midnight Thursday. Mr Lapid succeeds right-wing prime minister Naftali Bennett, who resigned under the pact signed between the two when they formed a coalition to replace Mr. Netanyahu in June 2021.
Immediately after the vote, Mr. Lapid made a symbolic visit to Yad Vashem, a research and memorial center in Jerusalem for victims of the Holocaust.
“There I made a promise to my late father that I would always keep Israel strong and able to defend itself and protect its children,” he later said. wrote on social media.
The campaign is expected to inflame debate over the role of both the Jewish far-right in Israel and the country’s Arab minority in governing coalitions.
To return to power, Mr. Netanyahu will probably need the support of a hardline nationalist coalition that many see as extremist. On the other hand, the leaving ruling coalition will most likely need the continued support of a small Muslim party to succeed. Israel’s right-wing supporters describe the party as a supporter of terrorism.
Mr. Lapid took office at a delicate time, with President Biden scheduled to visit Israel, West Bank and Saudi Arabia in mid-July. For weeks, some Israeli journalists have predicted that the US President’s visit could be accompanied by an announcement about warming relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries that have never had major diplomatic relations. awake.
The return to the ballot box for the fifth time since April 2019, has disappointed many voters. Snap elections have become a repeated fact of life because constituencies in recent years have remained consistent and evenly split between supporters and critics of Mr Netanyahu, preventing Mr. prevent him or his opponents from forming a stable government backed by a parliamentary majority.
“I don’t have the energy to vote again,” said Maya Kleinman, 45, a biologist in the city of Rehovot, central Israel. “I feel like I’m being forced to vote. I feel like I’m being held hostage by a small and smelly politics.”
Mitchell Barak, a political analyst and pollster in Jerusalem, if Israelis were ever surprised or even shaken by the speed at which they went to the polls since 2019, they are now reluctant to give up. leave that.
“As of this point, Israelis have pretty low expectations,” Mr. Barak said. Voters were shocked to return to the ballot box three times in 2019 and 2020. But coming to the fourth election in 2021, Mr. Barak added, “it seems like this is exactly how we do things. work here”.
The vote solidifies Israel’s status as one of the world’s most chaotic democracies. Since Mr. Netanyahu was first elected in 1996, Israel has held elections every 2.4 years – a rate more frequent than any other established parliamentary democracy, according to compiled data of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group.
As a carer, Mr Lapid will have little mandate to enforce broad changes in policy.
His ascent followed a recent one increase in Palestinian attacks about the Israelites, the escalation of a secret conflict between Israel and Iranand the resumption of US-backed talks to persuade Iran to limit its nuclear program, negotiations that Israel has criticized.
Mr Lapid is foreign minister in Mr. Bennett’s fragile and difficult coalition of right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab lawmakers, who put their differences aside last June to end Mr. Netanyahu’s term and free the Israelis from the relentless cycle of snap elections.
The coalition collapsed because some lawmakers eventually concluded that they were no longer willing to compromise on their political ideology simply to keep Mr. Netanyahu in power. Two right-wing members of the coalition defected after they felt the government had gone too far to the left, giving it a narrow majority.
The final blow came when some Arab coalition members refused to expand the two-tier legal system in the occupied West Bank, which has distinguished Israeli settlers from Palestinians since Israel captured the territory. in 1967. Critics call a form of racism. The system will expire at the end of the month if Congress is not dissolved, leaving Mr. Bennett, a former settler leader, collapse the alliance on its own.
Mr Bennett’s administration secured an initial coalition majority by partnering with Raam, an Islamist party first independent Arab party to serve in the Israeli government.
Mr. Netanyahu has strongly criticized Raam’s participation in the coalition, accusing the party of anti-Israel state and stating that he will not allow the party to participate in government.
“We will not let the honor of the nation be damaged,” Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday. “The state is being pulled from under our feet.”
In turn, Mr. Netanyahu has been criticized for his reliance on a coalition of far-right parties, known as the Religious Zionists, whom he will most likely need support to form. a majority coalition. Zionist leaders include Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hardline nationalist who until recently hung in his living room a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, a determined figure. Radical Jewish settlers murdered 29 Palestinians in a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron in 1994.
Supporters of the leaving coalition praised it for keeping extremists like Mr. Ben-Gvir from power and preventing Mr. Netanyahu from changing the legal system to make it easier for him to avoid prosecution. Mr. Netanyahu denies any such intention.
Understanding the fall of the Israeli government
Mr Bennett said on Wednesday that he would not run in the next election, but would stay in the current government as Mr Lapid’s second in command.
The Bennett administration prides itself on getting the government back up and running after a period of paralysis during Mr. Netanyahu’s last two years in office.
League over budget, the country’s first in more than three years. It improves Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration and continues to improve relations with Arab countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emiratesthe first country to form diplomatic relations with Israel near the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s term as head of government.
The Bennett government also began to liberalize dietary regulation; food import tax reduction; and, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the constitutional right to abortion, making it easier to get abortions in Israel – one of the last acts before leaving office.
It also oversaw the least violent year in Gaza in more than a decade, issuing thousands of new work permits to Palestinian residents in the territory in the hope that such outreach might convince militants in Gaza. reduce the number of missiles they fire at Israel.
However, the government maintains a blockade of Gaza. And it deepens Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, allow the construction of thousands of buildings in the Israeli settlements there.
For those on the left of the coalition, their policies towards Palestinians and Arabs in Israel have gone too far. As for those on the right, they didn’t go far enough.
Exacerbated by relentless pressure from Mr. Netanyahu, the policy conflict eventually led to the defection of two key members of the coalition, and others to vote against government bills.
While Mr. Netanyahu is currently gaining momentum, analysts and pollsters say the election is still too far away to make any meaningful predictions about its outcome.
Many analysts predict that the outcome will be inconclusive, leading to another election in 2023. That could keep Mr. Lapid in power for at least six months.
Mr. Lapid, 58, is the leader of Yesh Atid, the second largest party, after Likud. Unlike Mr Bennett, he supports the concept of a Palestinian state, but agreed to halt efforts to create a state in order to persuade far-rights like Mr Bennett to join the coalition last year.
A former TV presenter and columnist, he was first elected to Parliament in 2013 and immediately became finance minister under Mr. Netanyahu. He later became the leader of the opposition.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel; and Myra Noveck from Jerusalem.
