CAIRO – A second legislator has left Israel’s governing coalition, giving the opposition a narrow majority of two seats in parliament and raising the possibility of a fifth election in three years, adding to the country’s political stagnation.
Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, a member of Israel’s Palestinian minority from the left-wing Meretz party, resigned from the coalition on Thursday, the second lawmaker to do so in two months.
Ms. Rinawie Zoabi attributed her decision to the government’s treatment of the Arab community in Israel and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. She said recent police interventions at Jerusalem’s Aqsa Mosque and the police attack on mourners at a journalist’s funeral last week were the last straw.
“Once again, coalition leaders have favored taking aggressive, hard-line and right-wing stances on key grassroots issues of unparalleled importance to Arab society at large,” wrote Ms Rinawie Zoabi in a letter of resignation to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. and Secretary of State Yair Lapid.
“Not anymore,” she added. “I cannot continue to support the existence of a coalition that is colluding in this disgraceful way against the society I come from.”
Without Ms Rinawie Zoabi, the government could still survive with a minority in parliament until March 2023, when it will need a majority to approve a new budget. As Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir each led minority governments for extended periods, including when Rabin negotiated the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.
The current coalition could also try to entice opposition members to join the government by restoring its majority.
But the defection of Ms Rinawie Zoabi means opposition lawmakers now hold 61 of the 120 seats in parliament, enough to vote to dissolve the body and call new elections, the fifth since April 2019.
Opposition parties also have enough seats to create their own new coalition government without going to elections. But they are divided and may not agree on a candidate for prime minister, making new elections more likely.
The defection could be a political lifeline for Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who was ousted in June when the current coalition was formed. The coalition’s eight parties overcame profound ideological differences as they shared a desire to remove Mr Netanyahu, whose refusal to resign despite a corruption trial had alienated many of his natural allies on the right.
As a leftist, Ms. Rinawie Zoabi is not expected to support a Netanyahu-led government. But she could join the opposition next week to vote in new elections.
A spokesperson for Ms Rinawie-Zoabi said she had not yet decided whether or not to have a vote to dissolve parliament.
That would give Netanyahu another chance to win more seats for his right-wing alliance, giving them a majority in parliament.
The departure of Mrs. Rinawie Zoabi from the coalition is the latest manifestation of the incompatibility of the government’s eight constituent parties — a fickle alliance of right-wing, left-wing, secular, religious and Arab groups that joined forces in June after multiple indecisive elections were held. Israel left without a state budget or functional government.
The coalition was cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israel’s first in more than three years. It also made important administrative appointments and deepened Israel’s emerging relations with key Arab states.
At the founding, Ms. Rinawie Zoabi said she had hoped the government would take “a new path of equality and respect” between Jewish and Arab Israelis. As a first for Israel, the coalition included an independent Arab party, Raam, while an Arab was appointed a minister for only the third time in Israeli history.
But despite that early optimism, members of government regularly clashed over the rights of Israel’s Arab minority and settlement policy in the occupied West Bank.
Tensions came to a head during the recent holy month of Ramadan, when Israeli police regularly clashed with Palestinian stone throwers at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a site sacred to Muslims and Jews alike. They escalated further last week when a Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead in the West Bank during an Israeli raid — and then two days later police attacked mourners carrying her coffin to her funeral.
But while Mr Bennett has managed to persuade Raam to stay in the coalition through these successive crises, he has few resources to prevent further offshoots of the left-wing and Arab members. He also struggles to prevent further rebellion from the coalition’s right-wing members, who feel he has already stimulated Arab society enough.
Last month, a right-wing coalition member, Idit Silman, became the first government member to defect – and others are feared to follow, especially as the government faces pressure from the right to respond more vigorously to a rise in terrorist attacks.
If new elections are called, Israel could also be led by a new interim prime minister until a government is formed. Under the terms of the current coalition agreement, Foreign Secretary Lapid could take over from Mr Bennett in the event of snap elections, depending on how the government collapses.
That could put Mr Lapid, a centrist former broadcaster, in charge for at least several months, through an election campaign and the protracted coalition negotiations that are most likely to follow.
Carol Sutherland contributed from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel.