Deri: This is the Knesset's last chance - unite, or face elections
If Netanyahu and Gantz do not rise to Deri’s Yom Kippur challenge, they will find themselves going to elections between the Purim and Passover holidays.
By GIL HOFFMANAryeh Deri during Shas Conference on February 10th, 2019(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/ MAARIV)
The most savvy veteran politician in the Knesset, Interior Minister Arye Deri, did not announce that elections were definite on Monday.But he said the current government was facing “Neilah,” the final prayer service of Yom Kippur before the gates of heaven are believed to close. Ahead of the Neilah service, rabbis deliver their final sermons of the holiday, in which they beg their congregants to repent immediately.Which is exactly what Deri, who is a rabbi, did at his Shas faction meeting on Monday.“This is the time of Neilah for the government,” Deri said. “This is the time to set everything aside and focus on the coronavirus. If we don’t rise up now to the challenge of the moment and unite, it will be too late – and the entire people of Israel will unfortunately pay the price.”In other words, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz do not do what they were supposed to start doing on day one of the coalition, Israel will return to where it was before the “Emergency Coronavirus Government” was formed: an endless cycle of electoral stalemates.Neither Netanyahu nor Gantz want elections immediately, because it is not good for either of them politically. Netanyahu needs more time for a vaccine to be readily available in Israel before voters cast ballots. Polls show Gantz facing political doom, and that even is before Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai forms a party that could steal many of Blue and White’s remaining voters.But if Netanyahu and Gantz do not rise to Deri’s Yom Kippur challenge, they will find themselves going to elections between the Purim and Passover holidays.The most likely date for elections if the government falls over the failure to pass a state budget is March 23. But it is possible that if Netanyahu and Gantz continue to delay the inevitable, the race could even be held right after Passover on April 6.The earliest possible date for the race is March 2, which would be Election Day if opposition leader Yair Lapid succeeds in his quest to draft Blue and White’s support for dispersing the Knesset next Wednesday.Lapid is taking a risk by bringing the bill to a vote, because if it fails, no MK can raise a Knesset dispersal bill for six months. There is technically a very small chance that Gantz could get so angry at Netanyahu over the next two days that he could bring his own Knesset dispersal bill to a vote and initiate elections in February, but that would prevent him from passing legislation that would harm Netanyahu first.Then, of course, just like any Yom Kippur, there is the chance that both Netanyahu and Gantz will finally repent just in time. If they do that, elections could still be two or three years away.The march to unwanted elections in March 2021 can still be stopped – before the gates finally close.
