No snap Israeli elections, as coalition parties reach agreement

The prospect of Israeli elections in June ended on Tuesday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party announced that coalition parties had reached an agreement, reported Haaretz.

Shortly after the announcement was made, Netanyahu told the Knesset that he had kept his promise to avoid dissolving the government, and thanked his coalition partners for “showing responsibility”.

As part of the deal, “a preliminary version of the conscription law exempting draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from the draft was passed in the Knesset by a vote of 59 to 38”.

The compromise enabled “all of the members of the coalition factions vote as they choose”.

Citing “coalition sources”, Haaretz reported that “Netanyahu’s pivot was because he did not believe he would secure a majority to dissolve the Knesset and hold elections in late June”.

Read: Israeli politicians suspect Netanyahu seeks election to survive corruption probes

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded to the compromise by tweeting: “A promise is a promise! The proposal we insisted on all along has been accepted in full”.

“He then listed the party’s achievements, which he defined as follows: His Yisrael Beiteinu party will vote against the conscription bill proposed by the ultra-Orthodox, a Defense Ministry task force will propose its own bill on the issue, and all legislation on issues of religion and state will be frozen”.

Jewish Home chair Naftali Bennett also welcomed the deal, tweeting: “Common sense has won out. The national interest has prevailed. I congratulate the members of the coalition who were partners to the solution to this crisis”.

The Knesset also “voted down several opposition proposals to dissolve the parliament. Before the crisis was resolved, those proposals had been widely expected to receive support from the coalition parties, and thus to result in early elections”.