Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party announced Monday that it had submitted a new bill to dissolve the Knesset after Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman rejected a compromise in the month-long coalition talks.
Lieberman, whose party is crucial for a right-wing majority in the Knesset, has refused to join Netanyahu's government-in-the-making because the prime minister had agreed to rewrite parts of a bill dealing with haredi conscription that sets general quotas for the number of ultra-Orthodox men that get drafted each year to the Israel Defense Forces.
Lieberman believes the new language would effectively gut the bill's core provisions and has insisted that he would rather join the opposition than betray his principles. But Likud officials suspect that his real goal is to deny Netanyahu a fifth term because of the mutual animosity between the two.
On Sunday, after it became clear Lieberman was not going to compromise any further, Likud said it would go ahead with the plan to dissolve the Knesset. The party said that all of its MKs had to show up for the plenum vote on Monday in order to set the process in motion and warned that if Lieberman would not budge by Wednesday, the bill would pass its last hurdle and Israel would see a second general election in 2019.
If Netanyahu fails to form a new government by Wednesday, President Reuven Rivlin will have to choose another MK to form a government. Netanyahu will most likely seek to avoid such a scenario even if that means dissolving the Knesset.
Netanyahu needs Lieberman's five votes in the Knesset if he wants to avoid a minority government that would be at the mercy of the opposition. On Sunday, Netanyahu said he was making a "last-ditch attempt" to avoid an early election, but warned that he would not hesitate to pursue that route if Lieberman did not show flexibility.
