Israeli Coalition To Submit Bill To Dissolve Parliament

The leaders of Israel’s governing coalition say they will submit a bill next week to dissolve parliament, legislation that would force new elections if approved.

The move comes only a year after the ideologically disparate government came into being, and brings closer to reality a fifth election in less than four years with no guarantee of a viable new administration.

The bill will be submitted next week, and if it is approved, Lapid will take over as premier of a caretaker government, they added.

Under that scenario, it would be Lapid who would host US President Joe Biden during his scheduled visit to Israel next month.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported the election would be held on October 25.

Bennett’s ideologically divided eight-party coalition was aimed at bringing Israel out of an unprecedented era of political gridlock.

After former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, a veteran right-winger, failed to secure a parliamentary majority in four consecutive votes, an alliance of his rivals agreed to govern together, united primarily by a desire to end his divisive grip on power.

The coalition which was formed of religious nationalists, like Bennett, Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party, left-wingers and, for the first time in Israeli history, lawmakers from an Arab Islamist party, was under threat from its inception.

It lost its majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, in April when a member of Bennett’s Yamina party announced her departure.

Recent divisions over the renewal of a measure that allows Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank to live under Israeli law caused fresh friction, with some Arab lawmakers refusing to back it.