Israel risks facing 5th snap election as coalition chances look bleak
Mar 17, 2021
Tel Aviv [Israel], March 17 (ANI/Sputnik): Israel might have to hold a fifth consecutive snap election, as chances are extremely low that candidates in the upcoming vote manage to form a coalition, Sofi Ron-Moria, a candidate from the New Hope centre-right party, told Sputnik on Tuesday.
Israel will be having its fourth election in two years on March 23 due to the failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to preserve the coalition government. New Hope was established late last year when former Interior Minister Gideon Saar quit Netanyahu's Likud party and announced plans to run for premiership during the upcoming vote.
"I feel like we're going to a fifth-round if everything is going to happen according to the polls," Ron-Moria said, adding "we have a situation in which none of the parties can create a coalition."
According to the New Hope candidate, Israel's political landscape is currently divided between two blocs -- one led by Netanyahu and one that includes everyone else and is commonly referred to as "Just Not Bibi." If neither of them collects the 61 seats necessary for forming a government unilaterally, the all-against-all disagreements render chances of a coalition slim, Ron-Moria argued.
After the third snap vote that ended indecisively last March, Netanyahu was able to form a coalition government by teaming up with long-time political rival Benny Gantz and his Blue and White alliance, agreeing in exchange to make the premiership rotational between them.
"[Netanyahu] will be unable to pull off the 'Gantz operation' for the second time in a row, that is, he will not be able to lure other politicians into his coalition. On the other hand, the 'Just Not Bibi' bloc will also have little chance of building a coalition, because it is not a good match with the left-wing Meretz party," Ron-Moria said.
The coalition government between Blue and White and Netanyahu's Likud party collapsed because they failed to pass the 2020 budget on time. This happened in late December, which is less than a year before Gantz would assume the prime minister's chair. (ANI/Sputnik)
