israel’s PM Bennett loses majority after MP quits coalition

Idit Silman’s announcement has left Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition with 60 seats, the same as the opposition.

Israel has been plunged into a political crisis that could lead to months of paralysis and pave the way for the return of Benjamin Netanyahu to the premiership.

A key member of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party said on Wednesday that she was quitting his coalition government – a surprise move that suddenly leaves him without a parliamentary majority. Idit Silman’s announcement left Bennett’s coalition, an alliance of parties ranging from the Jewish right and Israeli leftists to a Palestinian party, with 60 seats, the same as the opposition. Although Silman’s defection does not mean the fall of the coalition, it raises the spectre of a potential return to office by Netanyahu less than a year after he lost the premiership to Bennett. “Key values in my worldview are inconsistent with current reality,” Silman wrote in a letter to Bennett, adding she could no longer stand to see those unspecified “values” harmed as a member of the coalition. She urged him “to acknowledge the truth: we tried. The time has come to think of a new course. To try to form a nationalist, Jewish, Zionist government”. On Monday, Silman lashed out at Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz after he instructed hospitals to allow leavened bread products onto their premises during the upcoming Passover holiday, in line with a recent supreme court ruling reversing years of prohibition.

Jewish tradition bars leavened bread from the public domain during Passover.Some Palestine-Israel observers said Bennett’s loss of majority in the Knesset proved the coalition was not right wing enough for many of its members .... Source: aljazeera.com