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ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu called for early elections as he fired two key ministers in his coalition for opposing government policy.
The sackings were the latest move in a political crisis that will come to a head on Wednesday when lawmakers vote on a bill to dissolve the parliament, or Knesset.
That would set the stage for a vote expected in March, in what would be Israel’s second general election in just over two years.
“In the current state of affairs, I can’t lead the country,” Netanyahu said at a news conference.
“This government, since its inception, has been adversarial,” he said, blaming Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni whom he fired of “acting against the government from within”.
Dissolving parliament
“In a word — it’s called a putsch,” he said of their conduct, accusing them of trying to form an alternative government with ultra-Orthodox members of the coalition.
Netanyahu said he was formulating a law to dissolve the parliament “as soon as possible” ahead of new elections.
“Frequent elections are not a good thing, but a government with no governance and ministers acting against it from within is much worse,” he said in televised remarks.
Lapid’s Yesh Atid party called Netanyahu’s decision to fire the two “an act of cowardice and loss of control,” with Livni saying the election would be a choice between Netanyahu’s “extremism” and her moderate “Zionism”.
The four other Yesh Atid ministers were to resign later yesterday, the party said.
Cracks in Netanyahu’s right-leaning coalition emerged over the 2015 budget and a contentious bill aimed at enshrining Israel’s status as the Jewish state in law, a move critics say could harm its Arab minority.
The bill was strongly opposed by both Lapid and Livni, who chairs HaTnuah, also centrist.
The two parties account for 25 of the coalition’s 68 seats.
The alliance was pieced together after a January 2013 election, with the next poll theoretically not due until November 2017.
To pass, the vote on dissolving parliament will need an absolute majority within the 120-member Knesset, requiring support from members of the ruling coalition.
Netanyahu likely to return
Sources in Netanyahu’s Likud party told AFP that members of the coalition were likely to support the bill.
The political tensions peaked on Monday after Netanyahu-Lapid talks aimed at heading off the crisis collapsed.
Netanyahu had demanded Lapid accede to five demands for the government to continue — including agreement to freeze his own flagship initiative for zero percent value-added tax on first home purchases, and to support the Jewish state bill.
Lapid refused, accusing Netanyahu of “irresponsibly” pursuing personal interests over those of the public, saying he “decided to take Israel to unnecessary elections”.
Should the right chalk up gains in a new election, it would diminish even further the chances of resuming dialogue with the Palestinians after the collapse of US-led peace talks in April.
Future government
US Secretary of State John Kerry said he hoped whatever future government formed would be able to “negotiate and move towards resolving differences between Israelis and Palestinians”.
The political comes amid increasing tensions with the Palestinians, with a growing wave of unrest and deadly “lone wolf” attacks.
With peace talks firmly off the agenda, Israel has seen a steady slide to the right.
And as chatter has grown about the possibility of early elections, Netanyahu has taken an increasingly hardline stance, throwing his weight behind controversial rightwing initiatives, notably the Jewish state bill.
Critics say that law, which has yet to be put to a vote, would come at the expense of democracy and would institutionalise discrimination against minorities.
Analysts say Netanyahu’s support for the bill is a gesture to Likud hardliners ahead of party primaries in January.
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My own electricity bill has risen from€90 to €130 per month. Also, it looks like I’ll finally have to move on from putting €30 a week into the car and increase it to €40. Straight away that’s me down €80 a month, just on those two things. That’s without mentioning the increase in cost of coal, heating oil and a million other day to day things. Not good. About the only thing not going up are my wages!
@Football in the Groin:
Skyrocketed isn’t even the word for inflation ever since FG came to power.
1 bed apartment I moved into was 450 euro over a decade ago, it went up to 750 in three years, I saw it last year for €1550.
They don’t build. Creating scarcity. Yet overspend in unnecessary areas.
What about tax poverty i.e. workers being taxed into effective poverty by taxation
@Damon16: You will be told by the main party bots to emigrate if you don’t like it.
Food and fuel poverty is a real thing in today’s society.the government don’t care about low income citizens anymore yet they are the ones most likely to be hit hardest.what a disgrace
@James: The hungry and cold citizens are armed with votes though.
@David Corrigan: A lot of people voted Sinn Fein yet same 2 parties are in Government so much for voting making a difference. As someone once said “if your vote made a difference they wouldn’t let you vote”
@Patrick Barrett: This is a dangerous line of thinking which the political establishment have worked very hard to trick you and millions of other people into, in order to convince you not to take part in bringing them down. Don’t fall for it. In the last election, the rise of the left forced FF and FG, two neoliberal parties who had successfully operated an entirely phoney revolving door “dichotomy” for most of the previous century, to finally admit that there’s little practical difference between the two and that they can, contrary to years and years of supposed rivalry, work together in a coalition.
The seismicity of this development cannot be overstated. For so many years they operated a two party system under the totally false pretence of being real alternatives to eachother. They can no longer do this. They will not be able to run their usual “it’s all the other party’s fault” campaign during the next election – to quote a classic political comedy, “they must all hang together, because if they don’t, they’ll all be hanged separately”.
Progress is undoubtedly slow. Frustratingly, infuriatingly, painfully slow. But the last election was the beginning of the end for civil war politics, in which Ireland’s choice was between “Conservative” and “Conservative, but my great-grandad fought against your great-grandad a hundred years ago”. We now have a meaningful left/right divide in our politics, and this will have a gigantic impact on policy going forward – whatever happens.
What about the person living on there own on the minimum wage paying for everything. We have nothing left after paying our bills
How much of an increase will the politicians receive in 2022?.
@Paul Power: They gave themselves 3 in the past 18 months, I’m guessing another two at least. They are already better paid than the leaders of pretty much any other country which is crazy when you consider how small our country is and the number of people each govern.
Your absolutely running to stand still in this country now. College fees, accommodation cost negligible tax relief on many big expenses like this. All the time prices are going up now and wage increases are only playing catch up
It’s way past time we tackled our tax upon a tax rip off. Increasing carbon tax hurts a bit but VAT on electricty(13.5%) also increases. It’s not sustainable and should be illegal.
Businesses are vat exempt bringing goods into Ireland. These products are then sold onto Irish consumers with a staggering 23% vat added after that business includes its own costs and profits. It’s no wonder consumers are buying direct from companies in Germany(19% vat) instead of buying from Irish outlets.
We did we stop being a social welfare state and became a Business welfare state?
So I had a look at my 8th August to 9th September electricity bill.
Usage of electricity amounted to €127.53.
Total electricity bill was €163.63 as it included –
Standing charge: ( a charge for the fixed cost associated with providing electricity supply) €16.50,
PSO Levy: ( a charge for security of supply and the generation of electricity) €6.52 and
VAT: (government tax) was €19.46.
Allowances of €3.83 for paperless billing and €2.55 for level pay were made.
Overall levies on the monthly bill of €127.53 amounted to €42.48 or 33.31% over the cost of electricity actually used.
Actual amount paid allowing for allowances of €6.38 was €163.63.
The government in their wisdom? have now decided to increase the amount of levies we pay on our electricity bills and no doubt gas, oil etc. also to satisfy the green cohort in their ranks.
As a pensioner who due to underhand tactics on the government’s part (averaging rule) is not receiving a full pension I will now receive a proportion of the €5 increase they awarded with great fanfare – to help meet their recent increase in their mythical carbon tax.
To misquote Shakespeare there is something rotten in the state of Ireland.
@Mary Dunphy: scandalous
The golden age of our civilisation is behind us. From now on everything will be more expensive.
Fuel prices increasing, increases everything for obvious reasons.
Repeatable(renewables) electricity will not be cheaper than fossil fuels, as FF are/were so easy to extract amd energy dense. Also when we have to stop using FF completely or run out of them, we ll have to be able to recycle/rebuild the wind/solar equipment using power from wind and solar.
This will limit our ability to grow economic growth. So there should be a planned slow down of economic activity, to allow us to live more sustainably within the means of the biosphere.
@Anarch Eco: You’re not wrong, but the elephant in the room here is human overpopulation. The more of us there are splitting the Earth pie, the less pie there is to go around. This should be common sense. We should be incentivising and encouraging people to not contribute to this, but the current economic model of “endless growth” requires that each generation be bigger than the last. It’s an insane ponzi scheme whose natural conclusion is to screw over whichever generation gets left holding the planetary bag when it bursts from being overstretched.
Why this isn’t talked about more is entirely beyond me. This planet has limited resources, the more people who have to share those resources, the less each individual’s quality of life can be. It should be blindingly obvious that regardless of any other factors, this is a real, serious, existential threat facing our civilisation – we’ve gone from three billion humans in the mid-20th century to almost nine billion now, and look what’s happening to the planet as a result.
It is madness to suggest that growth can continue indefinitely on a planet which has a fixed size and scale. It’s a mathematical impossibility.
@Patrick FitzGerald: you’re not wrong either!
10,000 years ago people were 1% of land mammal biomass
Today Humans plus livesstock are approx 95% mammal biomass.
Crazytown
So I had a look at my 8th August to 9th September electricity bill.
Usage of electricity amounted to €127.53.
Total electricity bill was €163.63 as it included –
Standing charge: ( a charge for the fixed cost associated with providing electricity supply) €16.50,
PSO Levy: ( a charge for security of supply and the generation of electricity) €6.52 and
VAT: (government tax) was €19.46.
Allowances of €3.83 for paperless billing and €2.55 for level pay were made.
Overall levies on the monthly bill of €127.53 amounted to €42.48 or 33.31% over the cost of electricity actually used.
Actual amount paid allowing for allowances of €6.38 was €163.63.
The government in their wisdom? have now decided to increase the amount of levies we pay on our electricity bills and no doubt gas, oil etc. also to satisfy the green cohort in their ranks.
As a pensioner who due to underhand tactics on the government’s part (averaging rule) is not receiving a full pension I will now receive a proportion of the €5 increase they awarded with great fanfare – to help meet their recent increase in their mythical carbon tax.
To misquote Shakespeare there is something rotten in the state of Ireland.
No rich enough to keep up with the gouys?… To the black market with you!!
have your say