The Israeli parliament dissolved Tuesday, December 22 at midnight local time (11 p.m. Paris time), plunging the Jewish state into its fourth electoral campaign in less than two years, amid tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and his ex -rival Benny Gantz.
The Covid-19 vaccination campaign has barely started in Israel when the government “Unity and emergency”, trained to face the health crisis, is on the verge of being shattered. After three ballots having placed them shoulder to shoulder, MM. Netanyahu and Gantz had provisionally buried the hatchet in the spring in order to form a unity government which included a rotation for the post of prime minister and the adoption of a single budget for the years 2020 and 2021.
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Failure of negotiations
But to materialize this rotation, and allow Mr. Gantz to access the post of head of government in 2021, parliamentarians should have first agreed on the budget. However, in recent months, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Bleu Blanc formation have failed to come to an agreement. And on the night of Monday to Tuesday, the parliamentarians rejected, by 49 votes to 47, a compromise proposal to adopt the budget in two stages.
By early Tuesday evening, no new proposal had been submitted to parliamentarians to avoid new elections, and no rumor was circulating about a possible last-minute compromise in this electoral countdown. “There is a law that says the Knesset dissolves at the stroke of midnight”for lack of agreement on the budget, said Uri Michael, spokesman for the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.
“After midnight, there is no more option (…) the Knesset will dissolve and nothing can be done anymore ” to avoid elections, Yohanan Plessner, president of the Israel Democratic Institute, a Jerusalem-based analysis center, explained. in the afternoon at Agence France-Presse.
Bloodless Blue White
The Israeli press on Tuesday crushed Benny Gantz, former head of the powerful army, who failed to get his justice reforms adopted, to become prime minister, or simply to keep his own political formation intact.
By making a pact with Likud in the spring, Benny Gantz had already seen his party split, half of the deputies refusing to join a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, because the man is being indicted for various embezzlements, breach of trust and corruption. Then in the last few months, the Bleu Blanc formation has seen its support melt like snow in the sun. First in the September 2019 election, his party would today only be sixth, or even seventh, according to the latest barometers.
“Perhaps the time has come for him to simply say: I tried. I wanted. I failed. I’m out “, estimated Tuesday the editorialist Sima Kadmon in the Yediot Aharonot, the best-selling title in the Hebrew press. “Unless there is a last minute change, not only the Knesset will be dissolved tonight, but also Bleu Blanc”, noted columnist Mati Tuchfeld, in the columns of the right-wing daily Israel Hayom.
Corruption lawsuit
If General Gantz lost this political battle, Benyamin Netanyahu, he did not come out unscathed in recent months, faced with the dispersion of his troops as he approached his appearance, at the beginning of 2021, before justice for corruption, the first trial in Israeli history for a sitting head of government.
Its former interior minister Gideon Saar announced this month the creation of his own party, Tikva Hadasha (“New hope” in French), openly on the right, and already credited with second place according to recent polls.
Likud remains in the lead in voting intentions for the time being, but the appearance of this new party and the rise of the radical right-wing Yamina formation of another former minister, Naftali Bennett, nibble votes at Mr. Netanyahu, which could end up after this umpteenth ballot without enough partners to stay in power.
