What You Need to Know About Israel’s New Elections

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/world/middleeast/israel-elections-netanyahu.html

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Israeli lawmakers voted early Thursday to dissolve the Parliament barely a month after it was sworn in, plunging Israel into unprecedented political chaos and raising questions about what comes next.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past decade and had seemed well placed to stay in charge after the April 9 election, failed to meet the deadline to form a governing coalition by midnight Wednesday, when a dispute between potential partners left him one seat short of a parliamentary majority.

He remains in office for now. But just seven weeks after one nationwide vote, Israel is preparing for a second election. This is the first time a new Parliament in the country has voted to dissolve itself before a government has even formed.

So how did Israel get here, and what happens next? Here’s what to know.

Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party won 35 of the 120 parliamentary seats in the April general election, the same number as the main centrist opposition party, Blue and White.

Unlike the Blue and White leader, Benny Gantz, however, Mr. Netanyahu seemed to have a clear route to a parliamentary majority. He was nominated to form a new government by 65 lawmakers from right-wing parties.

Coalition governments are a way of life in Israel, where the electoral system makes it extremely hard for any single party to win a parliamentary majority. And Mr. Netanyahu is known as a master of coalition negotiation.

By the midnight deadline, however, Likud was saying it had secured only 60 of the 61 seats it needed for a governing coalition.

The major sticking point was a military draft law that divided two parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance: the secular ultranationalist faction and the ultra-Orthodox parties.

In the past, Mr. Netanyahu might have reached out to centrists to explore an alternative coalition, or at least to force a compromise on the right. But Blue and White has said it will not work with him while he’s facing a corruption indictment, and the small center-left Labor Party rebuffed an approach.

That left Mr. Netanyahu to push for new elections rather than let the initiative pass to Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, a longtime rival. If the Parliament had not voted to dissolve itself, Mr. Rivlin could have asked another lawmaker — perhaps Mr. Gantz, or even one of Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals within Likud — to try to form a government.

Most Jewish men and women are conscripted at 18 and serve at least two years in the Israeli military. But strictly Orthodox Jews engaged in full-time religious studies have been exempted from compulsory military service. As the ultra-Orthodox minority has grown in size and political power, that exemption has become increasingly contentious.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews now make up about 11 percent of Israel’s population, according to statistics from the Israel Democracy Institute.

In 2017, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that a mass exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews was discriminatory and unconstitutional, a decision that caused outrage within the group. The court gave the government a year to draft a new law.

During the last session of Parliament, Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the secular ultranationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu, introduced a bill that would gradually increase the quota of ultra-Orthodox men in military service and impose penalties and fines if the quota were not reached.

Mr. Lieberman controls five seats in the new Parliament, and says he will not join a Netanyahu coalition unless it supports his bill unchanged.

But the religious parties have 16 lawmakers, and Mr. Netanyahu would need them, too. They insist the bill must be amended to create more exemptions for religious students.

The argument is largely symbolic — the bill is unlikely to significantly change the status quo — but neither side is backing down.

Mr. Netanyahu blamed Mr. Lieberman for the impasse, accusing him of trying to “shoot down this government” for political gain.

Mr. Netanyahu is entangled in scandals that could lead to his indictment, an issue that loomed over the April election and is sure to affect the next one.

In February, after a two-year investigation, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced plans to indict Mr. Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust and set a hearing for October where the prime minister’s lawyers can plead his case before a final decision is made on whether to indict.

No sitting prime minister of Israel has ever been indicted, and charges would place Mr. Netanyahu under substantial pressure to step down.

He maintains that the case is a political witch hunt and has said he would continue in office if charged. That appears legally possible, at least until a final conviction, though Israel’s Supreme Court could potentially intervene.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party had tried in recent days to promote legislation that would guarantee him immunity from prosecution while in office and limit the court’s power to rescind that immunity. Now that Parliament has dissolved itself, his chances of having such a law in place before any indictment is handed down are slim.

A second election has been scheduled for Sept. 17, and Mr. Netanyahu will remain in power at least until then. In July, he is set to overtake Israel’s founding leader, David Ben-Gurion, as the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

After the September election, according to Israeli law, the president must give the legislator with the best chance of assembling a majority coalition the first opportunity to form a government. Whether that will be Mr. Netanyahu remains to be seen.

The uncertainty could also affect the White House’s Middle East peace plan. The United States had said it would start to set out its ideas after the Israeli elections, and was planning to begin the first phase of the plan — an investment push for the Palestinian territories — at a conference in Bahrain next month.

Just hours after Parliament voted to hold new elections, President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is the plan’s chief architect, met with Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Kushner has been touring the region to gather support for the initiative, and it is unclear whether the political shake-up in Israel will thwart those efforts.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.