Knesset votes to hold elections on November 1 after self-dissolution

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
30 Jun 13:15

The next vote, however, won't include Naftali Bennett.

The Israeli Knesset.

After dissolving the Knesset on Thursday, the 24th Israeli parliament voted 92-0 to hold the next election on November 1 - however, the next elections won't include Bennett, after announcing that he will not be running. The Israeli government, with its deep divides, is failing internally.

After Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, the interior minister, is expected to head the Yamina party. and Yair Lapid will be the caretaker prime minister replacing Bennett until a new government is formulated.

Knesset members rejected the opposition's proposal to appoint October 25 as the date of the next election, whereas the Haredi Jews and other ultra-conservative groups encouraged such a date because it comes on the Jewish Yeshiva holiday.

Party lists need to be handed in by September 15 by 10 pm.

Labor and Yisrael Beytenu left the plenum, refusing to vote due to the opposition's refusal to expand "Tel Aviv's" rail network into a subway system.

Members of the Knesset from every party commented on its dissolving. For example, Blue and White MK Eitan Ginzburg said that his party did not want to dissolve the Knesset: "I believe we gave up too soon. Elections for the fifth time in four years are not a healthy thing for the country. We in the Knesset have created something special that had not seemed possible in the past."

"This dispersal was born in sin and continued in the sin of not passing the Metro Law because of personal and petty politics," Labor head Merav Michaeli said.

Trouble in apartheid regime

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just moments after Ginzburg's statements, said "this is what happens when you mix together a fake right-wing party and extreme leftist parties, mix with the Joint List - that's what you get.

"That's exactly what the upcoming election is about. Will there again be a failed Lapid government here, dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood in common with supporters of terrorism, or a broad and strong national government headed by us that will return pride, power and hope to Israel?"

"Lapid can only form a government with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Joint List," Netanyahu continued, calling Lapid the "most failed finance minister in the country's history," referring to inflation.