After surge in polls, Yesh Atid calls for early elections

The Yesh Atid party on Sunday called for the Knesset to be dissolved and for early elections to be set, days after an opinion poll showed it tied with the governing Likud party.

The call by the centrist party came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition faced vicious internal disagreements over a bill to prevent settlements built on private Palestinian land from being demolished.

“The citizens of Israel deserve more,” a press release from the Yesh Atid party said.

“The government of Israel is entirely self-involved with its own political rifts and with anything but what is important to the citizens of Israel,” the statement read. “There have been no substantive discussions in any government body over where the country is heading: Not in the economic, social, diplomatic or security realms.”

Yesh Atid said it will present the bill to dissolve the Knesset — which would set elections 90 days from its final reading — at Wednesday’s plenary session.

Formed by Yair Lapid in 2012, the Yesh Atid party stormed to a surprising 19-seat success in the 2013 elections for the Knesset, becoming the second largest party and joining the Likud in the coalition. In the 2015 elections the party slid to the 11 seats it currently holds in the Knesset, where it sits in the opposition.

The proposal came after a Channel 2 survey released Friday showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud tied with Yesh Atid, with each winning 25 seats in the Knesset if elections were held today.

The new survey showed both parties gaining ground since a September poll, in which Lapid’s party led with 24 Knesset seats to Likud’s 22.

Netanyahu is currently entangled in a coalition fight between the right-wing Jewish Home party and the center-right Kulanu over the so-called Regulation Bill and the future of the Amona outpost.

After over a decade of legal wrangling, the High Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that the Amona outpost, near Ramallah, which was founded in 1996 and is home to some 40 families, was built on privately-owned Palestinian land and ordered it razed by December 25 of this year.

A bill proposed by the national-religious Jewish Home party has been presented as a plan to avert the court-ordered December deadline to demolish Amona, and would see the government retroactively legalize other West Bank outposts built on privately-owned Palestinian land.

Kahlon’s 10-seat Kulanu faction has de facto veto power over legislation in the 67-seat coalition, as bills require a 61-seat majority to pass.

Netanyahu needs the support of both the 8-seat Jewish Home and 10-seat Kulanu in order to maintain a coalition.

According to the Friday poll, the third largest party would be the Joint (Arab) List which would maintain its current strength with 13 seats, followed by the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home with 11 seats (compared to 8 today).

Yisrael Beytenu would be next in line with 8 seats, followed by Shas, Meretz, United Torah Judaism and Kulanu — all with 7 seats.

Yesh Atid’s surge is seen to come largely at the expense of the Zionist Union, which would see over half of its voters support Lapid.