After two years, Israel will conduct its fourth snap election following its parliament missing a Tuesday deadline to pass a budget. The snap election will be held in March 2021.
The forthcoming snap election is the latest progress in a two-year-long saga in Israel that has prompted voters to the polls three times as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself succumbed to an ongoing corruption trial.
Israeli Snap Election
The Israeli parliament, also named the Knesset, dissolved itself on Tuesday following the fractured alliance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu missing the deadline of the 2020 national budget's approval. The momentous fourth election within the course of two years will take place on the 23rd of March, reported TRT World.
After two years, campaigning in the nation's fourth parliamentary election is simultaneous with Netanyahu igniting public anger over his overseeing of the COVID-19 pandemic and his engagement in a corruption trial, the first against an Israeli prime minister, reported Cyprus Mail.
The nation's longest-serving leader will also have a bout with a new right-wing rival, Gideon Saar, a renegade from Netanyahu's Likud party.
The move lurches Israel back into a long-drawn-out political crisis.
The former head of the opposition who begrudgingly joined Netanyahu's alliance in May, Benny Gantz, has not managed to get the prime minister's approval of a budget, reported The Guardian.
On Monday, parliament voted against efforts by both politicians to postpone a deadline of midnight on Tuesday to resolve a dispute over the fiscal package.
According to the law, failure to pass it by then would mean conducting the snap election. Neither parliament nor the cabinet has passed the fiscal package yet, a process that is practically impossible to complete in a single day.
Netanyahu and his former election opponent, Defence Minister Benny Gantz, initiated a unity government in May in the wake of three indeterminate elections held since April 2019. However, the alliance had been inching towards a downfall for weeks and was undermined by mutual animosity and dubiousness.
Under the three-year union deal, Netanyahu was supposed to serve as prime minister for one year and six months, then Gantz will be taking over in November 2021.
According to an opinion poll on Israel's Kan public TV on Tuesday, Saar draws even with Netanyahu.
Gantz and Netanyahu and have been preoccupied in a dispute over the national budget's passage, which is supposedly a precursor to the negotiation in which Gantz was to take over the prime minister.
The prime minister was indicted in November 2019 on accusations of fraud, bribery, and contravening trust over his alleged granting of state favors worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli media barons in return for favorable coverage and presents.
Netanyahu continues denial of criminal wrongdoings. Despite the foreboding of the corruption accusations, the PM has been able to remain in power.
He will remain in office at least until a new government is established after the snap election next year.
Israel's political crisis commenced in 2018 as discussions regarding a new military conscription bill seethed in the parliament.
