Israel calls snap election just one month after last vote, as Netanyahu fails to form new government

The premier's Likud party and allies supported a vote for the Israeli parliament to dissolve itself preventing Israel's president from tasking a rival leader with forming a ruling coalition

Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press yesterday after the Knesset vote (EPA)

For the first time in Israel’s history, the country’s parliament has voted to dissolve itself and call a second election just a month on from the last polls, after Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a ruling coalition in time.

The parliament voted 74-45 in favour of dissolving itself and setting elections for 17 September.

The move threw the country into political paralysis just as Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a team from Washington landed in Jerusalem hoping to drum up support for a regional peace deal they were supposed to reveal next month.

The deadlock was fuelled by a spectacular bust up between Mr Netanyahu and his former defence minister and ally Avigdor Lieberman, who refused to join his coalition over a conscription bill, stopping the premier from cementing a record fifth term in office.

The embattled premier had hoped the five seats of Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party would allow him to forge a 65-seat majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset, after he was tasked by the president with forming the government following the 9 April polls.

But Mr Lieberman refused to budge on a military draft law which would obligate ultra-Orthodox Jewish students to join the armed forces.

If Mr Netanyahu agreed to these terms, the premier risked losing the support of the ultra-Orthodox parties and their 16 seats again plunging him below the load line.

Furious, the prime minister blasted Mr Lieberman shortly after the vote calling him a "leftist".

“We will run a sharp, clear election campaign which will bring us victory. We will win, we will win and the public will win,” he added.

Mr Lieberman said earlier his refusal to cooperate was a matter of principle and not a “vendetta… to bring down the prime minister”.

He blamed the Likud for the parliament’s collapse saying the party “failed completely to form a coalition”.

“This is a surrender to the ultra-Orthodox parties … We never reached summation on any topic,” he added.

The ultra-Orthodox parties consider conscription a taboo, fearing that military service will lead to immersion in secularism, and insist the exemptions should stay in place.

A do-or-die attempt to forge a coalition with the centre-left Labour Party, who have six seats in parliament, also failed.

And so, with the deadline looming and little hope of an eleventh-hour break in the impasse, Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and other supporters sought fresh elections.

For Mr Netanyahu and his allies, a new election was a last-ditch attempt to ward against President Reuven Rivlin tasking an alternative lawmaker, such as Mr Netanyahu’s chief rival Benny Gantz, with forming a government, which the president is obliged to do if the initial candidate fails.

Opposition MKs including the head of the leftist Meretz party, who hoped Mr Rivlin might choose another leader to forge a coalition, had initially planned to filibuster the parliamentary session until the deadline past in order to prevent the vote on fresh elections from taking place.

Mr Rivlin, for his part, had said he would do “everything in [his] power to prevent the State of Israel from going to another election campaign”.

Critics say Mr Netanyahu is under mounting pressure to stay in power to counter the threat of indictment on corruption charges. He is due to face pre-trial hearing in October during which Israel’s attorney general Avichai Mandelblit will issue a final decision whether to send him to trial in three cases.

In the last few months the embattled leader has tried to push through several immunity laws that would shield him from prosecution.

In early May the Israeli media reported that the prime minister had been trying to advance a new bill that would “override” the Supreme Court’s authority to challenge a decision by the parliament to grant immunity, sparking uproar.

Mr Netanyahu had apparently already tried to restore the 2005 wording of an immunity law, where the Knesset House Committee could reject the attorney general’s request to rescind immunity of a particular parliamentarian.

If he is no longer prime minister governing a ruling coalition, it would be much harder to push any such legislation through parliament.

Cross-party protests were held at the weekend in Tel Aviv against the attempted bills which critics said would cripple the top court and impact the power of the judiciary.

Figures close to Mr Netanyahu told The Independent his decision to push ahead with the immunity laws was “inadvisable” and it made him far weaker, amid the stinging backlash.

Israelis protest against legislation that could exempt Netanyahu from standing trial, in Tel Aviv (Reuters/ Ammar Awad)

Analysts said fresh elections would cost the country significant funds and in the absence of a government, extend the political limbo until the end of the year during a tricky summer when the US had hoped to push ahead with some kind of peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“It is going to cost money it is going to be problematic, but we don’t have any other way,” Professor Abraham Diskin, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Independent.

“Netanyahu really believes his position would improve after the elections, whether he is right or not we will see,” he added.