The impending elections in the fall may trigger political chaos the like of which Israel saw between 2019 and 2021 since as of Tuesday, no political bloc has a clear majority that could allow it to stabilize the situation.
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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and coalition partner Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced Monday that they have exhausted all the possibilities to stabilize the government, saying that a vote on dissolving the Knesset would take place next week.
Bennett's government was sworn in last June after four deadlocked elections. The coalition, which includes a collection of eight hard-right, liberal and Arab parties, has been teetering on the brink of imploding for weeks, with several MKs bolting its ranks.
Once the bill is passed, the power-sharing deal between Bennett and Lapid – which included a rotation in the premiership that would have seen Lapid take office in November 2023 – will come into force and Lapid will assume the role of prime minister.
Several lawmakers said Tuesday that there could still be a way to salvage the term of the 24th Knesset by forming an alternative government to carry it through the next three years, but chances of that happening seem slim.
Barring a dramatic turn of events, the next election will take place on October 25. The results, however, may again plunge Israel into a series of repeated votes, as currently, polls say that no political bloc has the upper hand.
A survey held Tuesday by the Tel Aviv-base 103FM radio station found that were elections held at this time, Likud would win 36 Knesset seats, followed by Yesh Atid (20), Religious Zionist Party (10), Blue and White (8), Yamina (7), Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas (7) Labor (7), Ashkenazi Haredi party United Torah Judaism (6), Joint Arab List (6), Yisrael Beytenu (5), New Hope (4), and the Islamist Ra'am party (4).
These results give the right-wing bloc 59 Knesset seats to the Center-Left bloc's 55 – excluding the Joint Arab List, which is not expected to join any government.
Under Israeli law, a political leader needs the support of 61 lawmakers to form a government. This would require both blocs to court the smaller parties from across the political aisle to form a government or persuade the Joint Arab List to back the move without joining the coalition.
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