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Israel Moves to Hold New Election as Netanyahu Fails to Form a Coalition In Defeat for Netanyahu, Israel Moves to Hold New Election
(about 2 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Seven weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “a night of tremendous victory” in Israel’s election, his failure to form a government by midnight Wednesday has turned into a stunning debacle for him and thrust Israel into a new election. JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suffered a stunning defeat on Thursday after he failed to meet a midnight deadline to form a new government, casting a cloud over his future as prime minister and thrusting Israel into the chaos of a new election.
Israelis will return to the ballot box in about three months, the first time in the country’s history that it has been forced to hold a new national election because of a failure to form a government after the previous one. Just seven weeks ago, when Mr. Netanyahu basked in a postelection “night of victory,” he seemed invincible, confident that he would serve a fourth consecutive term and a fifth overall. Despite a looming indictment on corruption charges, he appeared set to surpass the nation’s founding leader, David Ben Gurion, as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
The Israeli Parliament voted to disperse itself early Thursday, only a month after being sworn in, with a majority of 74 in favor and 45 against in the 120-seat body. One member was absent. But after weeks of negotiations, his plans ran aground on a power struggle between two blocs of his potential right-wing coalition — the secular ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox factions — who refused to compromise on proposed legislation on military service.
The vote sets in motion a new election and casts a cloud over the future of Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister for the last decade. The dream collapsed in a breathtaking display of political maneuvering on Wednesday, as Mr. Netanyahu, long nicknamed “the magician” for the political wizardry that has kept him in office continuously for the past decade, desperately tried to salvage his fortunes.
After the April 9 election, Mr. Netanyahu was confident that his conservative Likud party would easily form a coalition with its past right-wing and religious allies. But his plans were stymied by a power struggle between secular ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox factions, who refused to compromise on proposed legislation on military service. With his conservative Likud party claiming it had locked down 60 seats, just one shy of a majority, he sought out new coalition partners. He even approached Labor, the center-left stalwart, which rebuffed his advance.
Facing possible corruption charges, Mr. Netanyahu had less political wiggle room to turn to more liberal parties and failed to assemble the 61-seat majority required to form a government. At the same time, his party advanced a fallback bill to dissolve Parliament and go to new elections.
President Reuven Rivlin had given Mr. Netanyahu six weeks to form a government, the maximum allowed by law. With hours to go before the deadline of midnight in Israel, Mr. Rivlin addressed an increasingly baffled public via social media to try to explain what could happen next. That bill passed shortly after midnight on Thursday, with Parliament voting to disperse itself just a month after it was sworn in, with 74 votes in favor and 45 against. One member was absent.
Mr. Rivlin said he could offer another member of Parliament the chance to form a government or he could tell the speaker of Parliament that efforts to form a coalition had failed and that there would be no alternative to calling new elections. Israelis will return to the ballot box in elections tentatively set for Sept. 17, the first time in the country’s history that it has been forced to hold a new national election because of the failure to form a government after the previous election.
But Mr. Netanyahu pre-empted Mr. Rivlin, whom he considers a foe, from choosing someone else to lead a new government by having his Likud party advance its own bill to disperse the Parliament before the president could act. Immediately after the parliamentary vote, Mr. Netanyahu angrily blamed Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the ultranationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu, for thwarting a right-wing coalition.
The main stumbling block to forming a coalition was Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the secular ultranationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu. Mr. Lieberman, whose five seats made him a kingmaker, said he supported Mr. Netanyahu but had refused to compromise with religious parties on a law that exempts ultra-Orthodox men from the military draft.
With Likud, the ultra-Orthodox parties and other right-wing allies commanding only 60 parliamentary seats — one short of a majority — Mr. Lieberman’s five seats made him a kingmaker. He sought to position himself as the champion of Israel’s secular right and a bulwark against the growing influence of the ultra-Orthodox parties. Mr. Netanyahu said that position was a ruse.
Mr. Netanyahu has long been nicknamed “the magician” for the political wizardry that has kept him in office continuously for the last decade, in addition to three years in the 1990s. “Lieberman never intended to reach an agreement,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “He clearly wanted to shoot down this government and he is doing so because he reckons he will receive a few more votes.”
But he is facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three corruption cases, and those legal troubles hampered his chances of forming an alternative government, lessening his leverage in coalition negotiations. “He won’t succeed, “ Mr. Netanyahu added, before hurling the ultimate insult: “Avigdor Lieberman is now part of the left.”
The main opposition party, the centrist Blue and White, which won 35 seats in April, the same number as Likud, has refused to be part of a government with a prime minister facing indictment. Mr. Lieberman, for his part, accused Mr. Netanyahu of “capitulating to the ultra-Orthodox.” Repeating a mantra of recent days, he added, “We are natural partners for a right-wing government but not for a government based on Jewish law.”
Mr. Netanyahu was given the mandate to form a government by Mr. Rivlin in April, on the recommendation of 65 legislators, including those from Mr. Lieberman’s party. Mr. Lieberman says he still supports Mr. Netanyahu for the premiership, and no other candidate, but will enter a Netanyahu government only on his terms. Mr. Netanyahu’s legal troubles — he is facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three corruption cases — also hampered his chances of forming an alternative government and weakened his leverage in coalition negotiations.
Even as his party moved to disperse Parliament, the prime minister blamed Mr. Lieberman for the political impasse. In a televised address Monday night at prime time, Mr. Netanyahu said, “There is no point in dragging the country to elections, which will cost a fortune and paralyze us all. Another six months? What have we turned into, into what Italy used to be?” The main opposition party, the centrist Blue and White, which won 35 seats in April, the same number as Likud, had refused to be part of a government with a prime minister facing indictment.
Mr. Lieberman, an unpredictable tough-talker with a penchant for political drama, has a long history of rivalry with Mr. Netanyahu, as well as periods of close cooperation. Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to form a government also scuppered plans to advance legislation giving him immunity from prosecution while in office. The attorney general has set a hearing for Mr. Netanyahu in early October, when there may still not be a new government, after which the attorney general can make a final decision on filing charges.
Mr. Lieberman brought his party into the last Netanyahu government in 2016, a year into its term, stabilizing an administration that previously had a parliamentary majority of only one. Mr. Lieberman insisted on being defense minister. He then resigned from the post in November, citing what he described as the government’s soft policy toward Gaza and calling for early elections. The reopened political season is also likely to overshadow and perhaps delay the Trump administration’s peace efforts. The White House had scheduled an economic development conference for the Palestinian territories next month in Bahrain, described as the first step in the economic portion of a long-delayed peace plan.
The policy he objected to — facilitating transfers of millions of dollars of cash from Qatar to Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, to maintain a fragile calm — has not changed. Jared Kushner and Jason D. Greenblatt, leaders of President Trump’s Middle East peace team, landed in Israel for meetings on Thursday, their arrival overshadowed by the political chaos.
At the core of the latest political crisis was a sharp disagreement between Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies over legislation to replace a military draft law that exempted ultra-Orthodox men. Israel’s Supreme Court has set a deadline of late July to replace the draft law. With Israel lacking an elected government at least until the fall, by which point Mr. Trump is likely to be consumed by his own re-election campaign, the prospects for advancing a peace plan already rejected out of hand by the Palestinians seemed to dim even further.
Mr. Lieberman has insisted that a new law that would set modest quotas for enlisting ultra-Orthodox men must pass without alteration. The religious parties, which have 16 parliamentary seats, insist it must be softened. Predicting that the political component of the peace plan, widely dubbed “the deal of the century,” would be pushed off indefinitely, Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian chief negotiator and P.L.O. secretary general, said Thursday, “Now it is the deal of the next century.”
The issue of unequal conscription has long roiled Israeli society and politics. Most Jewish 18-year-olds are drafted for more than two years. But Mr. Lieberman has also said that the military draft law is just a “symptom” of a broader battle over the character of the country. It is unclear whether anyone in Israel really wanted a new election, especially so soon after the previous one, least of all Mr. Netanyahu.
In a Facebook post late Tuesday, he denied that he was involved in any personal “vendetta” against Mr. Netanyahu or was seeking to topple him, as some Likud officials had suggested. But unable to form a coalition by the deadline, Mr. Netanyahu sought to head off a potentially worse result: President Reuven Rivlin, whom he considers a foe, could have offered someone else the chance to form a government. To pre-empt that possibility, Parliament had to dissolve itself before Mr. Rivlin could act.
He wrote: “I am for the state of Israel, I am for a Jewish state, but I am against a state based on Jewish religious law.” Although there were multiple causes for the debacle, attention focused early Thursday on Mr. Lieberman, an unpredictable tough-talker with a penchant for political drama and a long history of rivalry with Mr. Netanyahu, as well as periods of close cooperation.
Mr. Lieberman brought his party into the last Netanyahu government in 2016, stabilizing an administration that previously had a parliamentary majority of only one. He insisted on being defense minister, a post from which he resigned in November, citing what he described as the government’s soft policy toward Gaza and calling for early elections.
The policy he objected to — allowing the transfer of millions of dollars of cash from Qatar to Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza — has not changed.
At the core of the latest political crisis was a sharp disagreement between Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies over legislation to replace a military draft law that exempted ultra-Orthodox men. Israel’s Supreme Court has set a deadline of late July to replace the law.
Mr. Lieberman has insisted that a proposed new law that would set modest quotas for enlisting ultra-Orthodox men must pass without alteration. The religious parties, which have 16 parliamentary seats, insist it must be softened.
The issue of unequal conscription has long roiled Israeli society and politics. Most Jewish 18-year-olds are drafted for more than two years. But Mr. Lieberman has said that the military draft law is just a “symptom” of a broader battle over the character of the country.
“I am for the state of Israel,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “I am for a Jewish state, but I am against a state based on Jewish religious law.”
Yaakov Litzman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party called Mr. Lieberman’s use of the military draft law to prevent the formation of the coalition a cynical ploy “meant to confuse the public, with the purpose of inciting against the ultra-Orthodox community and gaining political profit at its expense.”
There was much speculation about Mr. Lieberman’s motives for refusing to bend on the military draft law, with suggestions that he was seeking attention or revenge for past political slights or that he was setting himself up as an alternative to Mr. Netanyahu.
”He is seizing leadership,” Nahum Barnea, a veteran columnist for Yediot Ahronot, said in an interview late Wednesday. “He wants to prove that despite Netanyahu taking him for granted, he, with his five seats, can cause turmoil.”
If that was his goal, he succeeded spectacularly.