In a first reading, lawmakers voted in favor of the bill that would lead Israel to its fifth election in three and a half years. To finalize the end of the current Knesset, the process requires another three votes, which could be completed next week. However, overcoming the political stalemate that Israel has been experiencing since 2019 is the greatest challenge of this eventual early election.
Although in the last year this was the chronicle of an announced dissolution –due to the weak cohesion of the varied government coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett–, it has not been until today that Israel has legally set out to put an end to its current Parliament , the fourth in just three and a half years.
It has done so after approving in a preliminary reading the bill that would give way to calling a fifth Israeli election, an initial process that has had a majority of 110 deputies (of the 120 that the Knesset holds in total) and that will extend with three other votes until at least June 27.
Overthrowing his own government, in favor of the renewal of laws that since 1967 have imposed a dual regime on the Palestinians and that were on the verge of judicially unprotecting Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, was the will of Bennett, who, to get ahead The readings would be temporarily followed by his co-leader and current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yair Lapid, 58 years old.
Although Israel seems to live since 2019 in a permanent electoral campaign, for this occasion Lapid knows that his biggest rivals will be the right-wing extremists and ultra-religious Jews who continue to support former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even though he is still being investigated in three separate cases for possible corruption and has done everything to confuse, in his words, “the worst government in Israel’s history.”
“Netanyahu knows that if Israel remains a liberal democracy, he will not be able to cancel his trial … Our mission is to make sure these people do not take power and not let them crush Israel’s democracy,” Yair Lapid said from Jerusalem.
A four-stage process that could be resolved on June 27
Although the preliminary vote paved the way for a new Knesset (Israeli Parliament), the legislative process of the project is far from complete.
With this first approval of the legislators, the text is now in the hands of the House committee, which must decide whether to continue with the process or refer it to the legal committee. Whoever receives the task will have control over the deadlines to formalize the disintegration of Parliament.
Thus, the process requires another three votes by the Knesset plenary and two reviews in the committees to be effective. Therefore, the earliest conclusion is expected for next Monday.
Given this scenario, a prevailing doubt in the Hebrew State is whether Nir Orbach, the legislator who resigned from Bennett’s coalition (they shared the Yamina party) and who heads the House committee, can delay the readings in order to allow room for an alternative government to be formed under the current composition of Parliament.
This option has been managed since April by the opposition bloc led by Likud, the party of former Prime Minister Netanyahu. Today, the right-wing and ultra-religious Jewish alliance has 55 seats and would need to attract at least six legislators aligned with the current Executive to finalize a new Administration without reaching new elections. However, this move seems unlikely.
And it is that, although the end of the Bennett government is a fact due to its structure of eight different parties, the ruling party and the opposition are still locked in a struggle to determine when the formal dissolution of Parliament will take place and under what terms.
What is evidenced in the 11 projects presented this Wednesday to disperse the Knesset and call for early elections: nine came from the opposition and two from the ruling party. Finally, they were all attached behind the proposal of Yarik Levin of the Likud party.
Meanwhile, another battle is raging over a proposed law that would seek to prevent a parliamentarian accused of crimes from becoming prime minister. The so-called ‘law of the accused’ – promoted by Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party – could affect Netanyahu’s attempt to return to power, which, in any case, would not have an easy time obtaining the necessary votes for its approval.
Outgoing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – already the shortest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history – anticipated via Twitter that, despite supporting the spirit of the idea, he will vote against the project, considering that “on the eve of the elections , one cannot try to change the rules of the game”.
Polls Favor Netanyahu, But Threat of Political Deadlock Remains
Four opinion polls published this Tuesday, June 21, in Israeli media (among them ‘Channel 12’ and the public station ‘Kan’), defined Netanyahu’s Likud as the favorite in possible elections, which would take place between the end of October, the beginning of of November.
These forecasts, the first released since the announcement of the dissolution of the current government by Bennett and Lapid, after having “exhausted the options to stabilize” the coalition, showed growth in favor of Netanyahu and his right-wing and ultra-religious Jewish allies, regarding the results of the 2021 elections.
Except that the bloc would not be enough to achieve the majority of 61 seats necessary to govern, and whose tight figure led Bennett to a tied mandate and then a minority, losing three of his allies since April.
In that line, even if they tried again, the numbers would not be enough for the coalition of Bennett and Lapid, who know the difficulty of maintaining partners and have seen an unprecedented formation of eight parties collapse, with figures from the extreme right, right, center, Social Democrats , left and Arabs.
After the triple resignation and lack of constant support from their legislators, the final blow came with the aforementioned bill, which renewed the legal protection of West Bank settlers, to which the United Arab List abstained and the opposition, even being in favour, he voted against in order to collapse the government.
A dynamic that, if not changed, will make Israel live in a political stalemate like “groundhog day.” The same one that has lasted since 2019 and has made it the State that most frequently holds elections in the world. Since 1996, one lives every 2.40 years.
With Reuters, AP and local media
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