Israel faces new political turmoil and a fourth election in less than two years after veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fractured ruling coalition failed to pass a budget bill early Wednesday.
His unhappy power-sharing deal with his former election rival, Defence Minister and Alternate PM Benny Gantz, struck in April, had been inching towards collapse for weeks, poisoned by mutual acrimony and mistrust.
It came to an end at midnight, forcing yet another unwanted election, on March 23, as Israel struggles with the COVID-19 epidemic and economic crisis, and as Netanyahu faces a string of hearings in his corruption trial.
In the looming election battle, Netanyahu is likely to tout his main diplomatic achievements, a series of US-brokered normalisation deals with Arab states, but without the support of his close ally, US President Donald Trump, who will be replaced by Joe Biden on January 20.
The Knesset legislature was dissolved when the coalition headed by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party missed a midnight deadline to pass a 2020 budget.
It marked the messy breakup of the troubled political marriage between the men who had faced off in three inconclusive elections, in April and September 2019 and March 2020.
Given Israel’s deep political divisions and the splintered electorate, it remains doubtful any single bloc or party will win a solid majority sufficient to form a stable government next time around.
“Israel’s ongoing political crisis will continue as long as Netanyahu remains prime minister and a government cannot be formed without him,” said Yohanan Plesner, head of the Israel Democracy Institute.
The coalition between Netanyahu, the long-dominant figure of Israeli politics, and Gantz had looked doomed for some time, said former lawmaker Haim Ramon, who advised Blue and White in last ditch mediation efforts.
“I told them … that if they didn’t depend on one another and learn to work together they would find themselves hanged alongside each other,” he was quoted as saying by the Maariv daily.
Budget battle
Gantz has said he never trusted Netanyahu but wanted to spare Israelis a fourth election, especially amid the pandemic.
Their three-year coalition deal had stipulated that Netanyahu serve as premier for the first 18 months, with Gantz taking over in November 2021.
The latest crisis came after Gantz demanded the government pass a budget covering both 2020 and 2021, arguing that Israel needed stability, and Netanyahu refused to endorse a 2021 budget.
That, his critics said, was a political tactic designed to keep the coalition unstable and make it easier for Netanyahu to sink the government before he had to yield power to Gantz.
Late Sunday, Blue and White said it had an agreement with Likud on a bill to buy more time to pass the budget, but the Knesset rejected that bill on Tuesday.
Lawmakers from Likud and Blue and White both voted against the coalition proposal.
Gantz, currently in precautionary coronavirus quarantine, was unable to vote. (AFP)
