Netanyahu confirms he may call early elections

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he is considering calling general elections later this year, rather than in 2013 as scheduled.

Army Radio claimed a September date was most likely. Israel Radio speculatively preferred October or December. According to the Army Radio report, the prime minister is thinking of a date ahead of Rosh Hashana, which this year starts on the eve of September 16.

Netanyahu told Likud party ministers on Sunday morning that he would make a decision on elections “in the next week or two.” Israel Radio said he had been in contact with Kadima opposition leader Shaul Mofaz on Friday to discuss early elections, but that no specific date was raised.

Netanyahu is reported to believe that early elections will work to his advantage by depriving the opposition parties, Kadima and Labor, of sufficient time to organize effectively.

On Sunday morning, he also reportedly told Boaz Nol, a representative of the public protest movement that is calling for new legislation requiring national service for all, that he intended to campaign with that issue as a central factor.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that early elections will hurt the ultra-Orthodox sector the most, particularly his own Shas party.

Labor’s Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said as far as his party is concerned, “the elections can be tomorrow.” He said the party was more than ready to face the public.

Kadima’s Dalia Itzik said the elections should be held “the sooner the better,” since the Netanyahu government “is achieving nothing.”

Matan Vilani, from the Independence party, said the public should be spared early elections, and that the government should see out its allotted time.

Opinion polls do not suggest a radical shift in Israeli voting habits since the elections that brought Netanyahu to power in 2009, but indicate a slight strengthening of the center right at the expense of the center left, and a collapse in the Kadima vote.

A poll in the Israel Hayom daily on Sunday showed the Likud under Netanyahu receiving 31 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, up from its current 27, comfortably ahead of Labor (17 seats), Yisrael Beitenu (14 seats) and Kadima (13 seats, down from its current 28). Yesh Atid, the new party under journalist-turned-politician Yair Lapid, would garner a respectable 12 seats, and the once-mighty Shas, nine seats. The new Independence Party, founded last year by Defense Minister Ehud Barak as a breakaway from Labor, would not enter the next Knesset, nor would Am Shalem, founded by Rabbi Haim Amsalem as a breakaway from Shas.

In answer to the question who would make the best prime minister, Netanyahu was preferred over his rivals, with 29.1 percent of those polled indicating he was their choice. Avigdor Lieberman was a distant second at 9.2%, followed by Yair Lapid (7%) and Shaul Mofaz (4.6%).