According to the bill, fresh elections will be held on October 25.
Jerusalem:
Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill to dissolve parliament, a significant legislative move that moves 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 fighting in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, since last week over a dissolution bill.
The coalition said it wanted speedy approval of the bill after Bennett announced last week that their years-old, ideologically divided, eight-party coalition was no longer sustainable.
But Netanyahu and his allies were in talks to form a new Netanyahu-led government within the current parliament, which would have postponed fresh elections.
The parties have traded legislative jabs, but ultimately agreed late Monday to push for a bill that will be finalized as law by the end of Wednesday.
The opposition’s readiness to dissolve parliament had stalled Netanyahu’s efforts to form a new government.
Early Tuesday, the Knesset House committee approved the bill. It was then brought to the plenum for the first reading, which it passed 53-0.
According to the bill, Parliament will be dissolved, fresh elections will be held on October 25 or November 1 and the date will be decided after further negotiations.
The bill must then be approved in two more full Knesset votes.
Some opposition lawmakers said there was still a chance to postpone another general election and restore Netanyahu to office by recruiting right-wingers from the outgoing coalition.
“We can still hold the election until midnight on Wednesday,” Bezel 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 the new elections could result in him losing seats or out of parliament altogether by falling below the minimum support threshold, according to Israeli media reports. 3.25 percent of all votes cast. Report.
– ‘It is what it is’ –
Lawmakers were expected to approve separate consensus legislation on Tuesday and Wednesday before a final vote on the dissolution bill.
After parliament is dissolved, Bennett will hand over power to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in accordance with a power-sharing agreement agreed after last year’s inconclusive elections.
The Bennett Coalition, a persuasive coalition of religious nationalists, secular hawks, centrists, pigeons and Arab Islamists, was influenced by their ideological divisions from the start.
The final straw, according to the premier, was the failure to renew a measure that ensures Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank live under Israeli law.
Bennett, the former head of a settlers lobby group, said the end of the measure on June 30 would bring security risks and “constitutional chaos”.
Dissolving Parliament before the expiration date means that the so-called West Bank law will remain in force until a new government takes over.
In what may be his last public appearance as premier, Bennett said his time in charge was “amazing” for Israel after “years of election”.
“I think we’ve done about 10 years of work in this one year and I’m very happy with that,” he said at Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week conference.
Bennett, a religious nationalist, said his alliance with the centrist Lapid – a man with whom he had promised never to part – brought stability after years of impasse.
“I’m not happy with the elections; it certainly doesn’t bode well for Israel, but it is what it is,” he said.
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