Bibi’s govt falls apart, election looms

ANT KATZ

Today Israel’s parliament votes on a bill to dissolve itself and trigger an early general election next March.

Yesterday the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sacked two important coalition partners for disobedience.

Netanyahu tolerated wide internal disagreements on such issues as negotiations with the Palestinians.

But the final straw may have been the support his centrist finance minister, Yair Lapid, and justice minister, Tzipi Livni, gave to a bill banning a newspaper that serves as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, which is owned and distributed free by a Jewish-American casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson.

“I will no longer tolerate opposition from within the government,” Netanyahu said in a televised news conference that signalled the opening of his re-election campaign.

Netanyahu has essentially accused Lapid and Livni, of making the country ungovernable with their frequent public criticism of his policies in recent weeks.

With the firings, the occasional quarrelling and simmering tensions that have characterized the 20-month-old coalition government broke into an all-out shouting match, as Netanyahu, seeking to move the nation toward the right, used harsh language to criticise his rivals, and they responded in kind.

Already Israel’s second-longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu hopes to secure a fourth term with support from religious parties. But his opponents depict him as the overseer of an ultra-nationalist coalition, which is destabilising relations with the Palestinians and could tip Israel towards becoming a religious state.