With a serious coalition crisis freshly resolved, the Likud party continued to soar in the polls this week, with results indicating that public confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership remains steadfast.
A Geocartography Knowledge Group poll commissioned this week by Likud found that if elections were to be held at this time, Likud would win a whopping 39 Knesset seats (out of 120), with all other parties lagging far behind.
The survey projected that the Yesh Atid party would win 20 seats, followed by Zionist Union and the Joint Arab List with 10 seats each. United Torah Judaism would win 9, Habayit Hayehudi 8, Meretz 7, and Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu would win five seats each.
A new party founded by former Yisrael Beytenu MK Orly Levy-Abekasis, which has yet to be named, is projected to win seven Knesset seats, while Shas, which has been part of every Knesset since its inception in 1984, is not expected to meet the minimum electoral threshold.
While the results predict the right-wing bloc would lose Shas – a natural coalition partner – they still guarantee that Netanyahu will be able to assemble a 66-MK coalition, similar to the current one.
If Levy-Abekasis' party joins the coalition as well, it could grow to comprise 73 MKs, making it even more stable than the current one.
Coalition insiders on Thursday expressed satisfaction and relief that the threat of early elections had been evaded prior to parliament breaking for its spring recess.
According to the deal brokered between the coalition partners, the controversial conscription bill pushed by United Torah Judaism, which sparked the crisis, will not be discussed during the first month of the Knesset's summer session, which begins in June.
The bill, an amendment to Israel's Defense Service Law, seeks to legally anchor exemptions from mandatory military service afforded to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
The current conscription exemptions are set to expire in September, and coalition sources said that unless the issue is addressed in a timely manner during the summer session, another coalition crisis might be only a few months away.
Meanwhile, Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon announced Thursday that his party would quit the coalition if a criminal indictment is filed against the prime minister, who is currently being investigated in a number of corruption cases.
In an interview with the Hadashot evening news, Kahlon was asked about an eventuality where the corruption investigations against Netanyahu result in an indictment.
"If the attorney general decides to indict the prime minister, he will no longer be able to hold office. … Likud [MKs] can say whatever they want, but if a prime minister goes on trial he can't remain in office."
Netanyahu, he said, "doesn't need me to tell him that. I think that either he will resign or other parties will exit [the coalition]."
