Israel set for new election?
Israel is awash with speculation that new elections could be on the way, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deadline for building a coalition looms.
His official deadline falls this weekend, but with just one faction on board apart from his own – the six-seat Hatnuah Party – he is still short of the Knesset majority he needs. He has just 37 of the chamber’s 120 seats, meaning that he requires another 24. Yet a stalemate appears to have taken hold, as Netanyahu remains determined to secure a far larger majority.
“He is not interested in the coalition he could build easily, which is small enough that two of the parties would have a veto power and cause the collapse of the government on any issue,” Hebrew University political scientist Abraham Diskin told The AJN.
The kind of stable coalition that Netanyahu wants requires a combination of the Charedi and non-Charedi parties. But with Labour insisting it won’t join, Netanyahu has a problem.
The two remaining non-Charedi candidates say they will only enter as a pair, and only if the Charedi parties are excluded. Centrist Yesh Atid and religious-Zionist Jewish Home say they are determined to draft Charedim to the army, which they believe will be impossible with the community’s political representatives in the government.
If the stalemate continues Netanyahu can ask President Shimon Peres for a two-week extension to make a breakthrough. If that period expires without him building a government, Peres can give another politician a chance to do so, or insist on new elections. Pollsters already have one eye cast towards another ballot, with a new Knesset Channel poll concluding that Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu list would come second, while Yesh Atid would win.
Seemingly worried by the possibility of new elections, Likud-Beitenu made warm overtures to Yesh Atid this week. Relations between the two parties have been tense since Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, said in late January that he expects to be prime minister after the next election, and since Netanyahu published a plan to draft Charedim to the army which Yesh Atid views as too soft.
On Sunday, Netanyahu invited Yesh Atid to join the government, and held talks with Jewish Home – though without offering concessions on the Charedi draft. On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s aides told reporters he expects to sign Jewish Home to the coalition soon.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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