Israel to dissolve Knesset, hold early vote as tensions soar

The coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a decision to dissolve Israel's parliament, the Knesset, calling for snap general elections as soon as April.

The announcement was made on Monday, after Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party failed to garner the necessary support to pass controversial legislation aimed at drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military. 

"The leaders of the coalition decided unanimously to dissolve parliament and go to a new election in early April," a spokesman for the Israeli premier wrote on Twitter.

Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party also said in a statement that “budgetary responsibilities” had pushed the leaders of the coalition parties to “dissolve the Knesset and go to new elections at the beginning of April after a four-year term.”

Local media said legislative elections would most likely take place on April 9, 2019.

Netanyahu, who currently serves as Israel’s minister for military affairs, foreign minister and health minister, will be running for his fifth term as prime minister in the upcoming vote.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu had called an emergency meeting of his coalition heads to debate the military conscription bill affecting exemptions from compulsory service for ultra-Orthodox Jewish students.

Yair Lapid, head of the opposition Yesh Atid party and Netanyahu’s main challenger, clearly announced that his faction would not back the contentious legislation, calling any compromise "a payoff to draft dodgers."

Netanyahu’s coalition has been teetering on the edge with a one-seat majority since the November 14 resignation of the Israeli minister for military affairs, Avigdor Liberman, who stepped down over the Tel Aviv’s handling of ongoing tensions in the Gaza Strip. 

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Tensions have also been running high near the fence separating the Gaza Strip from the occupied territories since March 30, the day when Gaza protesters started their “Great March of Return” protests.

Palestinian protesters demand the right to return for those driven out of their homeland.

The clashes in Gaza reached their peak on May 14, the eve of the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day, or the Day of Catastrophe, which coincided this year with Washington's relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

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A senior Hamas official says Palestinian people will continue their “Great March of Return” protests until the end of Israeli siege of Gaza.

More than 220 Palestinians have so far been killed and over 20,000 others wounded in the renewed Gaza clashes, according to the latest figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry.

Gaza has been under Israel’s siege since June 2007, causing a decline in living standards as well as unprecedented unemployment and poverty.

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