Netanyahu calls for elections
Israeli leader fires 2 ministers, says criticism intolerable.
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel fired his centrist finance and justice ministers Tuesday, calling for the dissolution of Israel’s parliament and early elections.
Netanyahu criticized Yair Lapid, the finance minister, and Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, for attacking his government and its policies from within in recent weeks, declaring in a statement, “I will no longer tolerate opposition from within the government.”
Israel’s march toward early elections began last week with a political row over a nationality bill. This week it morphed into a clash over proposed housing changes and the state budget.
But Israeli political analysts said the move toward new elections, 20 months after the current coalition was sworn in, was not about nationality or reduced-cost housing or any other issue of ideology or principle.
Instead, they said, Netanyahu had simply had enough of his fractious coalition partners and wanted a more manageable government made up of rightist allies and the ultra-Orthodox parties he has long considered his natural partners.
“It is not about this law or that,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, a former politician and a public opinion and national security expert at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Noting that there was room for compromise on the nationality bill and that Netanyahu originally voted in favor of the housing bill, he said the prime minister appeared to have used these issues to force a coalition crisis.
“This was Netanyahu’s call and his alone,” Ben Meir added.
Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and a key coalition member who has tried to mediate between the quarreling factions, said at a news conference Tuesday, “Elections are a fait accompli.”
He added, “They should be held as soon as possible.”
A bill for the dissolution of the parliament could be brought to a vote in the coming week. Elections would then be scheduled for March at the earliest.
Long-simmering tensions within the current coalition, which is made up of five rightist and centrist parties, crystallized into a bitter rivalry between Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud Party, and Lapid, the leader of Yesh Atid, a major coalition member.
A Monday night meeting between Netanyahu and Lapid was billed as a last chance for the sides to iron out their differences. But barely minutes after Lapid left the room, Netanyahu’s office provided Israeli political reporters with a list of five conditions that the prime minister had presented to the finance minister.
The list included a demand that Lapid stop criticizing Netanyahu for his policies and his relations with the United States; a demand for support for a version of the nationality bill yet to be presented by Netanyahu; changes to a budget that had already been agreed upon; and an order to freeze a bill that would exempt young couples from paying the value-added tax when buying a first home — Lapid’s flagship initiative.
In a speech at an energy conference Tuesday, Lapid accused Netanyahu of forcing “unnecessary elections” and castigated him for the damage to Israel’s relations with the United States “because of patronizing and at times insulting behavior.”
“These elections are not about a particular issue,” Lapid added. “Not about security and not about society.”
Elsewhere on Tuesday, the United Nations general assembly approved an Arab-backed resolution Tuesday calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight.
The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to “accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons” and put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
The United States and Canada were among four countries that joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained.
Israel is widely considered to possess nuclear arms but declines to confirm it. Israel’s U.N. Mission did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, France’s lower house of Parliament voted to urge the government to recognize a Palestinian state, in the hope that it would speed up peace efforts after decades of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The 339-151 vote is nonbinding, but it’s a symbolic boost for the Palestinians, amid growing support in Europe for two states. The measure asks the government “to recognize the state of Palestine in view of reaching a definitive settlement to the conflict.”
France’s Socialist government supports a Palestinian state, but has said it’s too early for recognition. France, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, wants peace talks to restart first.