Israel heads towards snap election, Lapid poised to be PM

BSS :
Israel’s Parliament is expected to be dissolved on Wednesday, ending Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s year-long tenure and triggering a fifth election in less than four years that could see ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu reclaim power.Barring an 11th-hour shock agreement to save the coalition or form a new government within the existing parliament, Bennett’s eight-party alliance is due to end by midnight, installing Foreign Minister Yair Lapid as prime minister.
The former television anchor is set to head a caretaker government, ahead of polls due in late October or early November.
Bennett’s motley alliance formed in 2021 offered a reprieve from an unprecedented era of political gridlock, ending Netanyahu’s record 12 consecutive years in power and passing Israel’s first state budget since 2018.
Netanyahu-a divisive hawk aligned with far-right nationalists and Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties-has promised victory in new elections but may again struggle to rally a parliamentary majority, opinion polls show. He is currently on trial over corruption charges, which he denies.The anti-Netanyahu camp will likely be led by Lapid, a centrist who has surprised many since being dismissed as a lightweight when he entered politics a decade ago.
As he and Bennett announced last week that their coalition was no longer tenable, Lapid sought to cast Netanyahu’s potential return to office as a national threat.
“What we need to do today is go back to the concept of Israeli unity. Not to let dark forces tear us apart from within,” Lapid said. While parliament’s collapse appeared a near certainty, last-minute surprises remained possible given Israel’s volatile political climate.
Factions across the political spectrum fear fresh polls will see them lose seats or end up out of parliament entirely by falling below the minimum support threshold, which is 3.25 percent of votes cast. But options to avoid another election were vanishing, according to Israeli reports.That means Lapid is expected to take office at midnight after parliament gives final approval to a dissolution bill, in accordance with the power-sharing deal he agreed with Bennett last June.
A parliamentary committee was meeting Wednesday to finalise the bill that must clear two more plenum votes before becoming law. One reported holdup was a dispute over the election date.Netanyahu and his allies are fighting for an October election when their supporters will be on a break from religious study centres, hoping that might boost turnout in what could be another extremely close contest, media said. Bennett, a religious nationalist, has led a coalition of right-wingers, centrists, doves and Islamists from the Raam faction, which made history by becoming the first Arab party to support an Israeli government in the Jewish state’s 74-year history.
The alliance, united by its desire to oust Netanyahu and break a damaging cycle of inconclusive elections, was imperilled from the outset by its ideological divides.
But Bennett said the final straw was a failure to renew a measure that ensures the roughly 475,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank live under Israeli law.