UK Edition
Netanyahu's government teeters as coalition allies say it is 'not possible' to continue
Israel’s government was in turmoil on Friday after one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main coalition partners said there was “no possibility” the government could keep working and called for early elections.
The Right-wing Jewish Home party called for the government to dissolve itself and being setting a date for elections after Mr Netanyahu refused to give them control of the defence ministry.
The party stopped short of pulling out of the government, which would have triggered an immediate collapse, but there seemed to be little prospect of holding the fractious coalition together.
As the coalition started teeter, Mr Netanyahu issued a last-minute call for unity and warned that it would be “a historic mistake” for Right-wing parties to bring down his government.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue to talk with coalition leaders on Sunday so that they will not make a historic mistake of toppling a right-wing government,” said a spokesman for Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party.
Mr Netanyahu raised the spectre of the collapse of a Likud-led government in 1992, which led to Labour taking power and signing the Oslo Accords agreement with the Palestinians, to the fury the Israeli Right.
But Jewish Home appeared adamant that there was nothing left to negotiate, saying there was “no possibility of continuing the current government”.
Jewish Home called for “elections as soon as possible” and said the coalition parties would meet on Sunday to set a date for the election.
The earliest elections could happen is February but Mr Netanyahu is likely to push for a later date.
The political crisis was sparked when Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hawkish defence minister, resigned on Wednesday in protest at Mr Netanyahu’s decision to strike a ceasefire deal with Hamas to end 24 hours of fighting in Gaza.
Mr Lieberman accused the prime minister of “surrendering to terror” and said Israel should have moved more aggressively against Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip. His decision to take his party out of the coalition left Mr Netanyahu’s government with a majority of one, controlling only 61 seats in the 120 seat parliament.
Naftali Bennett, the leader of Jewish Home, then demanded that Mr Netanyahu appoint him defence minister. The two men met for crunch talks on Friday and Mr Netanyahu refused to hand over the defence post, saying he planned to act as defence minister himself.
The decision means Mr Netanyahu will simultaneously serve as Israel’s prime minister, defence minister, foreign minister, and health minister.
Despite the chaos of this week and the corruption scandal swirling around him and his wife, Mr Netanyahu appears well placed to win an election and form a new Right-wing government.
A poll for Israel’s Channel 2 found that Mr Netanyahu’s Likud would win 29 seats in an election, making it by far the biggest party. The centrist Yesh Atid party would take 18 seats while the centre-Left Zionist Union would win only 11.
However, he will be eager to delay the election as long as possible to give time for the unpopular ceasefire agreement to fade in the memories of Right-wing Israeli voters.
Mr Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 and served a brief three-year stint as prime minister in the late 1990s. If he is still prime minister in July next year, he will have overtaken David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, as the longest-serving leader of Israel.
The current government could continue serving until November 2019 but Israel’s coalition governments rarely serve out their full four-year terms.
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