Israel will hold a snap election in March after parliament failed to meet a deadline to pass a budget, triggering a ballot presenting challenges for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Campaigning in Israel’s fourth parliamentary election in two years gets underway with Mr Netanyahu facing public anger over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and while he is engaged in a corruption trial, the first against an Israeli prime minister.
Israel’s longest-serving leader will also have to contend with a new rival from the right, Gideon Saar, a defector from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party. An opinion poll on Israel’s Kan public TV on Tuesday showed Mr Saar drawing even with the Prime Minister.
Mr Netanyahu, who has denied any criminal wrongdoing, and the current defence minister, centrist politician Benny Gantz, established a unity government in May after three inconclusive elections held since April 2019.
But they have been locked in a dispute about passing a national budget, key to implementing a deal in which Mr Gantz was to have taken over from Mr Netanyahu in November 2021. A new election means that “rotation” will never happen.
Some political analysts said Mr Netanyahu had hoped to use the budget dispute to force an election that would get him out of the power-sharing deal with Mr Gantz. But they said he had preferred a ballot in May or June, when a COVID vaccination campaign now underway could bring him more voters.
Read the article by Jeffrey Heller in The New Daily.