Israel’s fragile coalition government has lost a crucial vote in parliament to pass a routine bill extending Israeli law to settlers living in the West Bank, a result that complicates the country’s rule over the territory and threatens new elections.
The law, enacted as an emergency measure following Israel’s capture of the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, usually has wide political support and passes easily. But former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu marshaled the entire opposition – which includes politicians who strongly support the law in principle – to vote against it overnight Monday in an attempt to embarrass the ruling coalition and potentially bring it down.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government – a hodgepodge of left, right, centrist and Arab parties formed to push Mr Netanyahu from office last year – came up short, 52 to 58, in its bid to pass the measure. With 60 members in a 120-seat parliament, the coalition couldn’t lose any votes, but all members of the Arab Ra’am party voted against the bill and others from left-wing parties abstained. One member of Mr Bennett’s own party voted against the bill, despite her support of the settlement enterprise. Some of the coalition’s right-wing members had said the government couldn’t continue if it couldn’t pass this bill, putting Mr Bennett’s grip on power in jeopardy after less than a year in office and raising the prospect of an election.
Read the article by Rory Jones and Yardena Schwartz in The Australian.