Knesset Dissolved, Israel Going to Elections
The 21st Knesset has been dissolved, less than a month after it was sworn in. The Knesset approved the Knesset Dispersion Law on Wednesday evening by a majority of 74 to 45.
Earlier, the haredi parties Degel Hatorah and Shas announced that their spiritual leaders approved the compromise, which states that the Draft Law will be passed in its first reading and that amendments will be made before it is approved in second and third readings. However, the Yisrael Beytenu rejected this compromise proposal as well.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to the approval of the law to dissolve the 21st Knesset, a month after it was sworn in.
“The Israeli public made a clear and unequivocal decision: That I would be prime minister and that the Likud would lead a right-wing government. The public chose me to lead the State of Israel. The various parties that ran for Knesset, many of them said they would support me. 60 out of the 65 mandates granted to the right did what they undertook upon themselves to do. One party did the exact opposite. Avigdor Liberman misled his voters. From the get go, he had no intention of joining the government,” said Netanyahu.
“In eight months Avigdor Liberman is dragging the country twice to elections because of personal whims and an attempt to get a few more seats. Simply unbelievable. Avigdor Liberman is now part of the left, he is the heart of the left,” Netanyahu continued, blasting the Yisrael Beytenu chairman.
Earlier on Wednesday, Liberman addressed the crisis in the coalition talks.
“There is nothing hidden behind the draft law. There is no problem other than the law. As I have already said – all the inventors of other theories – try us,” Liberman said.
“Regarding the trick of removing the heart of the law from primary legislation and changing it into a government decision – this is not cosmetics. It is emptying the law of its content. I think that every reasonable person would accept my proposal, and I think that the haredi MKs, and I know them well, are reasonable people,” he said. “So I hope they will accept my proposal.”
“The haredim are still trying to transfer the recruitment targets and the expiration of the draft law from the original law [whereby these factors were determined in the legislation] to the government’s decision,” said the Yisrael Beytenu chairman. “Under no circumstances will we let this happen.”
