Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, is set to dissolve itself by the end of the month, which will trigger the fifth round of elections that the country has had over the past three years. In the meantime, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will stand in as prime minister.
See, a year ago, a coalition was put together between eight minority parties that essentially had one goal – to get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of office. They managed to do that and in came Naftali Bennett. But because those parties had little ideological alignment, it seems they sort of fell apart in disagreement about some key votes, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and state and religious issues.
So now the question is whether or not Netanyahu, who has refused to leave politics despite facing corruption charges, will be able to run and win again or whether a new coalition will come to take this one’s place.
Key comments:
“We did everything we possibly could to preserve this government, whose survival we see as a national interest,” said current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in a televised speech Monday. “To my regret, our efforts did not succeed,” he added.
“This evening is wonderful news for the citizens of Israel,” said former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This government has ended its path, a government that depended on terror supporters, which abandoned the personal security of the citizens of Israel, that raised the cost of living to unheard-of heights, that imposed unnecessary taxes, that endangered our Jewish entity. This government is going home.”
