Jerusalem:
Israeli lawmakers unanimously approved a bill on Tuesday to dissolve parliament, a major legislative move that brings the country closer to its fifth election in less than four years.
Members of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s outgoing coalition and the opposition led by ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been sparring in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, over a dissolution law since last week.
The coalition said it wanted swift approval of the bill after Bennett announced last week that his year-old, ideologically divided alliance of eight parties was no longer tenable.
But Netanyahu and his allies had been in talks to form a new Netanyahu-led government within the current parliament, which would have averted new elections.
The parties exchanged legislative thrusts, but finally agreed late Monday night to introduce a bill that would be passed into law by the end of Wednesday.
The opposition’s willingness to dissolve parliament suggested Netanyahu’s efforts to form a new government had stalled.
Early on Tuesday, the Knesset House Committee approved the bill. It was then taken to the plenum for the first reading, which passed it 53-0.
Under the bill, parliament would be dissolved, with new elections on October 25 or November 1, the date of which would be set after further negotiations.
The bill must then be approved with two more full votes in the Knesset.
Some opposition lawmakers said there was still a chance to avert another general election and restore Netanyahu to office by recruiting right-wing people from the outgoing coalition.
“We can still avoid elections on Wednesday,” Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism party told parliament. “But if they are forced upon us, they will be the dawn of a new day.”
Some Knesset factions, including ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that support Netanyahu, fear that new polls could lead to them losing seats or disappearing completely from parliament by falling below the minimum support threshold, which is 3.25 percent of all votes cast. is, according to Israeli media. reports.
– ‘It is what it is’ –
Lawmakers were expected to pass a series of separate consensus legislation on Tuesday and Wednesday before a final vote on the dissolution bill was due.
After parliament is dissolved, Bennett will hand over power to Secretary of State Yair Lapid, in accordance with the power-sharing deal they negotiated last year after unclear elections.
The Bennett Coalition, a motley crew of religious nationalists, secular hawks, centrists, doves and Arab Islamists, was jeopardized from the start by its ideological divisions.
The final straw, according to the prime minister, was the failure to renew a measure that would ensure that Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank live under Israeli law.
Bennett, the former head of a settler lobbying group, said the expiration of the measure on June 30 would pose security risks and “constitutional chaos.”
If parliament is dissolved before its expiry date, the so-called West Bank law will remain in force until a new government takes office.
In what may have been his last public event as prime minister, Bennett said his time as leader was “great” for Israel after “tumultuous years of elections”.
“I think we’ve done about 10 years of work in this one year, and I’m pretty happy with that,” he told Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week conference.
Bennett, a religious nationalist, said his alliance with the centrist Lapid — a man he once vowed never to work with — brought stability to years of deadlock.
“I’m not happy with the election; it’s certainly not good for Israel, but it is what it is,” he said.
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