Israel's parliament has voted to dissolve itself, sending the country to an unprecedented second snap election this year as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition before a midnight deadline.
Parliament voted early Thursday 74-45 to disperse and call new elections.
The dramatic vote, less than two months after the most recent parliamentary election, marked a setback for Netanyahu and sent the longtime leader's future into turmoil.
Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past decade, had appeared to capture a fourth consecutive term in the April 9 elections. But infighting among his allies, and disagreement over proposed bills to protect Netanyahu from prosecution stymied his efforts to form a majority coalition.
"I didn't spare any effort to avoid unnecessary elections," Netanyahu said after the vote, lashing out at his ally-turned-rival, Avigdor Lieberman, who refused the prime minister's offers to join the government.
Had the deadline passed without the vote, Israel's president would have given another lawmaker, most likely Opposition leader Benny Gantz, an opportunity to put together a coalition.
After the vote, Gantz angrily accused Netanyahu of choosing self-preservation over allowing the country's political process to run its course. Gantz said Netanyahu opted for "three crazy months" of a new campaign and millions of wasted dollars over new elections because he is "legally incapacitated" by looming indictments.
"There is no other reason," Gantz said.
The country now plunges into a new election campaign that will last at least three months under Israeli law. With much of the country on vacation in late August, a tentative date of Sept. 17 was set.
The campaign looks to complicate Netanyahu's precarious legal standing. Israel's attorney general has recommended pressing criminal charges against him in three separate corruption cases, pending a hearing scheduled for October.
Even if Netanyahu wins the election, it is unlikely he will be able to form a government and lock down the required political support for an immunity deal before an expected indictment. That would force him to stand trial and put heavy pressure on him to step aside.
The political uncertainty could also spell trouble for the White House's Mideast peace efforts. The U.S. has scheduled a conference next month in Bahrain to unveil what it says is the first phase of its peace plan, an initiative aimed at drawing investment into the Palestinian territories.
But with the Palestinians — who accuse the U.S. of being unfairly biased toward Israel — opposed to the plan, and Netanyahu preoccupied with re-election, it remains unclear how the Americans will be able to proceed. U.S. President Donald Trump's top Mideast adviser, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, was in Israel and scheduled to meet with Netanyahu on Thursday.
Talks failed Wednesday to find a compromise that would allow Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu faction to join Netanyahu's right-wing coalition. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
That Netanyahu struggled to secure a majority coalition in the 120-seat parliament was a shocking turn of events for the country's dominating political figure. In the April 9 vote, Netanyahu's Likud party and its hardline nationalist and religious parties captured a majority of 65 seats.
The immediate cause of the crisis was Netanyahu's dispute with Lieberman, a former aide who leads the small Yisrael Beiteinu faction. The men had clashed over Lieberman's demand to subject ultra-Orthodox religious males to the military draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish males.
Without Lieberman's five parliamentary seats, Netanyahu had no majority. But the deeper issue is connected to Netanyahu's legal troubles.
Facing a likely indictment, he had pushed his coalition partners to pass legislation that would grant him immunity and curb the powers of the country's Supreme Court. Opposition parties strongly oppose granting Netanyahu immunity, robbing him of any alternatives to Lieberman as he tried to form a coalition.
Secular versus orthodox agendas
Though a staunch nationalist, Lieberman also champions a secular agenda aimed toward his core political base of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and has pledged to confront efforts of the ultra-Orthodox parties to impose their lifestyle on the country's secular majority.
"I am not against the ultra-Orthodox community. I am for the state of Israel. I am for a Jewish state but against a Halachicstate," Lieberman wrote on Facebook early Wednesday, using a term that refers to a Jewish state governed by Jewish law.
The ultra-Orthodox parties consider conscription a taboo, fearing that military service will lead to immersion in secularism, and insist the exemptions stay in place. Netanyahu, dependent on their political support, says they have compromised enough and is refusing to press them further.
Netanyahu maintained contacts with Lieberman and other parties in hopes of forging a deal as a parliamentary debate took place. Many of the Likud speakers lashed out at Lieberman, accusing him of forcing an unnecessary election.
But as a parliamentary debate stretched toward midnight, it became clear there would be no compromise.
A bitter Netanyahu claimed after the vote that Lieberman "had no intention" to compromise and made unrealistic demands.
"He is dragging the entire country for another half a year of elections," he said.
Simpsons Bully wrote:HAW-HAW!
I hope Netanyahu ends up in prison, not the Presidency.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
The situation is hilarious. Bibi went from kingmaker to groveler in chief, promising anything to anyone would save him.
There are so many more layers than what the article covered, a few examples are
* Bibi has no power and got completely shafted. If in the past, dealing out favours was his power, he ended up promising to replace the leather chairs with vegan friendly ones to people just to vote for him.
* The embattled chief of Labor, got offered a lifeline. Bibi offered him a win/win lose/lose situation. He would join the government, get his pick of cabinet seats and veto powers over specific laws. He turned it down because his party would desert him if he went along.
* The Arab parties now have a very strong example of what happens when they run separately and do not encourage turnout.
The comedy award goes to an Arab MK who lampooned Bibi's attempt to form a coalition on stage.
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
It looks like Net's power was his inevitability, and when that is lost, suddenly everyone withdraws incase he drags them down with them?
Acepace. Could you expand on the Arab parties comment?
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madd0ct0r wrote: ↑2019-05-31 01:06pm
It looks like Net's power was his inevitability, and when that is lost, suddenly everyone withdraws incase he drags them down with them?
Acepace. Could you expand on the Arab parties comment?
In 2014, a law was passed raising the minimum voting percentage required to get into the Knesset. On paper, it was meant to improve political stability. In reality it was a shot at the arab parties, which were very fragmented. In response, they joined forces and ran a single list, "the united party" IIRC. They got 13% of the vote.
During the past 4 years, the Arab parties have been a bad joke, focusing on foreign policy and getting involved in scandals instead of focusing on improving the Arab citizens life. So when we reached the March elections, turnout in the Arab voting places was horrible and one of the parties barely got in(*). My hope is that the Arab parties put aside their differences, run together and create a voting block that will require the left wing parties to put them into the coalition.
(*) The scandal around hidden cameras in voting areas is entirely irrelevant as voter turnout was abysmal even before this was reported.
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
On another topic. It's important to note that Israeli politics are not facing the same problem as U.S. politics. The right wing is pretty horrible but they are not trying to hijack elections or anything like that. They are offering a set of public policy proposals that are far more popular among the Jewish demographic than the left or center parties are. The reasons for their popularity is the utter failure of the leftwing parties here in offering any sort of alternative besides "we're not the right wingers!".
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
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If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
madd0ct0r wrote: ↑2019-05-31 01:06pm
It looks like Net's power was his inevitability, and when that is lost, suddenly everyone withdraws incase he drags them down with them?
Acepace. Could you expand on the Arab parties comment?
In 2014, a law was passed raising the minimum voting percentage required to get into the Knesset. On paper, it was meant to improve political stability. In reality it was a shot at the arab parties, which were very fragmented. In response, they joined forces and ran a single list, "the united party" IIRC. They got 13% of the vote.
During the past 4 years, the Arab parties have been a bad joke, focusing on foreign policy and getting involved in scandals instead of focusing on improving the Arab citizens life. So when we reached the March elections, turnout in the Arab voting places was horrible and one of the parties barely got in(*). My hope is that the Arab parties put aside their differences, run together and create a voting block that will require the left wing parties to put them into the coalition.
(*) The scandal around hidden cameras in voting areas is entirely irrelevant as voter turnout was abysmal even before this was reported.
To expand, for the recent election, the Joint Arab List fell apart and they eventually went with two separate lists of two parties each (it should be noted that while they're often politically lumped together, even without taking the Joint List into account, the Arab parties - of which there are currently four in the Knesset - are pretty disparate in many ways and don't necessarily like each other very much - the formation of the JAL was largely due to survival pressure).
OTOH, I don't see any party other than maybe Meretz willing to invite them to join a coalition - they tend to be pretty hostile to everyone else and have made themselves quite unpopular with most of the Jewish electorate. And on the flip side, the Arab parties have historically refused to consider joining coalitions. What they may do is support a center-left government from the outside (the coalition doesn't actually need to include more than 60 MKs - it just needs a majority of the Knesset to vote in its favor).
