RTThu, 30 May 2019 20:41 UTC
© Global Look PressIsraeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (C, 1st row) and Avigdor Lieberman (L, 2nd row)
Israel's Knesset has voted to dissolve, ending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition-forming struggles and triggering new elections.
The vote passed its second reading shortly after midnight, with 77 members of the Knesset voting in favor and 45 against. After a third and final vote, the parliament was dissolved and fresh elections called. Netanyahu had faced a midnight deadline for pulling together a government.
Netanyahu's efforts ultimately fell flat after him and ally Avigdor Lieberman, and a collection of ultra-Orthodox parties failed to agree on a controversial military draft bill for Orthodox religious students.
Lieberman accused Netanyahu of selling out to the interests of the religious right.
"We're natural partners for a right-wing government," he said of the Likud leader ahead of Wednesday's vote.
"We won't be partners in a religious-law government." Lieberman's support had been crucial to Netanyahu's coalition-building effort.
After the Prime Minister and his party voted to fire themselves from the jobs they got only seven weeks ago, Netanyahu can now focus on contesting new elections, slated for September. Victory would give Netanyahu another shot at forming a coalition, and see the embattled PM continue his fifth term in office.
Netanyahu's win in last month's general election came at a cost. After enlisting the support of a clutch of right-wing and Orthodox Jewish parties, the Israeli leader soon ran into trouble forming a coalition government.
Former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose support Netanyahu depended on to build a coalition, has clashed with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the drafting of Yeshiva students to the country's military. The Orthodox politicians insisted that the religious students remain exempt from the draft, while Lieberman attempted to push a bill ending their exemption.
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Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to win a snap election in September after he failed to meet the deadline to form a coalition government and the parliament, for the first time in history, voted to dissolve itself.
"We will run a sharp, clear election campaign which will bring us victory. We will win, we will win and the public will win," Netanyahu told reporters in a brief statement after parliament voted to dissolve itself. The vote of 74 to 45 in favor of dismantling the Knesset will send the country into yet another election on September 17.
After more than a month of futile attempts to form a coalition government following last month's election victory, Netanyahu made a last-ditch effort to strike a deal between ex-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman and ultra-Orthodox parties on military draft exemptions. But that attempt has failed, with Lieberman blaming Netanyahu for dragging the country into another election because of the Likud's party's refusal to vote on a bill to draft the ultra-Orthodox Jews into mandatory military service.
Netanyahu hit back at his former commander, claiming that Lieberman misled his voters just to drag Israel into a new election "just because he wants a few more votes, which he won't get." The PM also accused Lieberman of being a man of the left who "brings down right-wing governments."
Meanwhile the leader of the opposition, Benny Gantz, who previously argued that his Blue and White party should be given the chance to form a coalition if Netanyahu fails, slammed the Prime Minister as well.
"Bibi proved again - not Israel before all. Bibi over everything," he said on Twitter. "Bibi was a prisoner of the legal fortress and trying to avoid prison. The people will have to pay for Bibi's failure."
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