[ad_1]
Observers believe Netanyahu deliberately overthrew the government before being forced to hand over power to Gantz (AFP)
The Israeli Knesset was dissolved at midnight on Wednesday, calling for new elections after its members failed to pass the general budget.
Israeli officials had until 23:59 local time (21:59 GMT) on Tuesday to approve the budget and avoid holding new elections, which would be the fourth in almost two years, but a compromise solution that led to the dissolution of the Knesset.
The dispute was not between the government and the opposition, but between partners in the “unity and emergency” government formed in the spring by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former electoral rival Benny Gantz.
For weeks, the coalition government has been slowly on the way to collapse. According to his training agreement, he had until midnight Tuesday / Wednesday to approve the 2020 budget.
Gantz, a former army general, accused Netanyahu of refusing to approve the budget for personal political reasons.
The three-year coalition agreement stipulates that Netanyahu will serve as prime minister for 18 months, and Gantz, the current deputy prime minister, will take office in November 2021.
Gantz insisted that the coalition must pass a two-year budget, including 2021, on the pretext that Israel needs stability after the worst political crisis in its history and the destruction of its economy due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Netanyahu refused to back the 2021 budget. His opponents said it was an overt political tactic to keep the coalition in an unstable state, making it easier for him to topple the government before being forced to hand over power to Gantz.
Netanyahu refused to endorse the 2021 budget. His opponents say it is an open political tactic to keep the coalition in an unstable state.
These elections will be the fourth of their kind in less than two years, since Netanyahu dissolved his previous government in December 2019, and the elections were held in April last year. After the aforementioned elections, Netanyahu was unable to form a new government, so he announced the dissolution of the elected Knesset, and second elections were held on September 17 in the same year, which established stagnation and political crisis, and after the third elections in March this year, Netanyahu was able to form a government. An emergency national unity with the “Kahol Laffan” party, after Gantz obtained the recommendation of 61 Knesset deputies, including members of the Joint List of Arab Parties, to form a government, but Gantz preferred to separate from his two partners on the list, Yair Lapid and Buggy Ya’alon, and form a government of national unity with Netanyahu last May, after he withdrew from the consolidated list and took 15 deputies with him.
During the last seven months of the new government, Netanyahu did not leave an opportunity to insult Gantz and ignore him without exploiting him, and this was clearly evident in the announcement of normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, and their meeting. with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, without informing Gantz, who holds the post of Security Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, about any of these developments or the negotiations that preceded them, and even when Netanyahu announced Two weeks ago the appointment of a new Mossad chief to succeed the current president Yossi Cohen, took care to leak to the press that Gantz was not informed, despite being the alternate prime minister and security minister. , In the new appointment.
During the last seven months of the new government, Netanyahu has left only one opportunity to insult and ignore Gantz.
The new elections come amid shifts in the Israeli party map and the establishment of the right as the dominant force in Israel. Opinion polls await right-wing parties, especially after Gideon Sa’ar’s withdrawal from the Likud and the formation of a new party called “New Hope for Unity for Israel”, with more than 82 seats. Known as right-wing parties, on the one hand, and the historic fall of the Labor Party and its expected demise from the party map after the elections, and the survival of a single left-wing party, the “Meretz” movement, which polls hope to win only 7 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
(France Press, The New Arab)
[ad_2]
