Netanyahu tells Likud chiefs to prepare for early elections

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with leading members of his Likud party on Monday and told them to prepare for early elections, if necessary, as bickering in the coalition threatened to tear the government apart.

“Prepare for early elections in the hope that it doesn’t come to that,” Netanyahu told the faction leaders, according to Haaretz.

At least one of the senior Likud figures warned Netanyahu that the party is not ready for general elections less than two years after they were last held, and advised it would be better to wait until after the end of December when new legislation regarding political parties is expected to be passed, the report said.

In addition, the Likud has its own elections for party chairman set for January 6, the top faction official noted.

Earlier in the day Netanyahu called and then canceled an emergency Likud meeting for consultations ahead of possible early elections.

While one anonymous participant played down the importance of the meeting, saying it was purely informational, a source close to Netanyahu said it had been called in the wake of reports that Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the Yesh Atid party head, had been trying to form an alternative coalition with Haredi lawmakers. Lapid shrugged off those reports earlier Monday, and said he was not seeking to bring down the government.

Lapid has been trying to push through a controversial tax-free home purchase bill, which his party defines as a make-or-break move for Yesh Atid’s continued participation in the coalition. That effort took a hit when Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman pushed off a committee vote Monday, opening another fissure in the ruling coalition.

Meanwhile, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the hawkish Jewish Home party, warned that if a bill to define Israel by law as a Jewish state did not pass, “there will be no coalition.”

“When we formed the government, we agreed that we would pass the ‘Jewish state’ law,” added Bennett, whose Jewish Home party — in contrast to Netanyahu’s Likud, Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua and Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu — is riding high in the polls.

Liberman held up Lapid’s flagship “Zero VAT” bill, which would allow first-time home-buyers a pass on taxes, in the Knesset Finance Committee and has said that his party will not vote in favor of it. The committee was supposed to vote on the bill Monday. Still, Liberman also said Monday he was not seeking early elections.

In addition, coalition partners have been publicly sniping and threatening retaliation after Justice Minister Livni tried to torpedo the “Jewish state” bill.

Bennett and Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu were apparently retaliating against their more dovish coalition partner after Livni, with the support of Yesh Atid, used her powers as chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation to scuttle a vote Sunday on the “Jewish State” bill, preventing it from being sent to the Knesset for a vote.

Netanyahu then said that the bill would not be presented to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation for a second time as Livni wished, and would instead be debated next week by the full government cabinet, which has the authority to forward legislation to the Knesset plenum for vote.

However, the prime minister’s response did not satisfy Bennett, who accused Yesh Atid and Livni’s Hatnua party of breaking coalition agreements and said that Jewish Home would no longer support bills from those two parties, his coalition partners.

The proposal currently on the table is one of several different bills seeking to define Israel as a Jewish state that have been circling in the Knesset in recent years, none of which have made much progress in the plenum, and is considered to present the most extreme version of such a law.

In another sign the coalition may be on the verge of collapsing, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers claimed Sunday to have been approached by politicians and businessmen, who urged the Haredi parties to join in forming an alternative government headed by Lapid and Labor party leader Isaac Herzog, currently the head of the opposition.

Haaretz reported on Monday that coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) had responded to the move by making a counteroffer to the Haredi parties to bring them into the government.