Bennett and Lapid had brought together in June 2021 a unique coalition in the history of Israel that brought together parties from the right, center, left and, for the first time, an Arab formation, to end the 12 consecutive years of Benjamin Netanyahu at front of the government.
The coalition agreement between Bennett and Lapid also provided for the rotation between the two at the head of the Executive and the replacement of Bennett by Lapid in the event of the dissolution of Parliament.
If the parliamentary dissolution bill is passed by MPs, Yair Lapid will become Israel’s new prime minister until a new government is formed.
Yair Lapid he will become prime minister “soon,” Bennett confirmed on Monday, promising to respect the agreement between the two.
Naftali Bennett “puts the interests of the country before his personal interests,” said Lapid, who should already be prime minister during US President Joe Biden’s visit on July 13, his first to Israel since taking office in January 2021.
The coalition had to grapple with the issue of the renewal of the settler law, which allows Israeli laws to apply to the more than 475,000 Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank.
This text, in force since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, in 1967, is ratified every five years by Parliament.
But the opposition, which largely supports this law, managed on June 6 to gather a majority of votes against the renewal of the text, hoping to show the internal tensions of the coalition.
The law had to be renewed before June 30 or Israeli settlers in the West Bank would lose their legal protection under Israeli law. However, if the Chamber was dissolved, the law was automatically extended.
“With the expiration of this law, Israel risked serious security problems and legal chaos. I could not accept it,” said Bennett, head of the radical right-wing group Yamina, to justify the dissolution of Parliament.
In the weeks prior to that vote, the coalition had already lost its majority with the departure of a deputy from the Yamina party. And since that vote, another member of this right-wing party, Nir Orbach, has threatened to stop supporting the government.
In this context, the opposition led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accused of corruption in a series of cases, threatened to present a bill to dissolve Parliament on Wednesday, June 22.
But the coalition wanted to take the initiative and requested the dissolution of Parliament, which, if approved, will lead to new elections on October 25, according to local media. It will be the fifth election in less than four years in Israel.
The latest polls continue to place Likud, Netanyahu’s party (right), in the lead in voting intentions, but without exceeding the majority threshold (61 deputies out of 120 in Parliament) together with their allies from the ultra-Orthodox formations and of the extreme right.
Source: Ambito
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