Israeli lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament on Thursday, collapsing the government, installing a caretaker Prime Minister and sending an exhausted electorate to the fifth election in less than four years.

The vote will give Benjamin Netanyahu, the Rightwing former Prime Minister and current Opposition leader, a chance to regain power. But while polls suggest that Netanyahu’s party, Likud, will remain the largest party in parliament, they also show that his wider Right-wing alliance could still struggle to form a majority coalition — prolonging Israel’s political stalemate and raising the likelihood of another election in 2023.

The return to the ballot box, for the fifth time since April 2019, was greeted with frustration by many voters. Snap elections have become a repetitive fact of life in a country where the electorate has in recent years remained consistently and evenly divided between supporters and critics of Netanyahu, preventing him or his opponents from forming a stable government backed by a parliamentary majority.

“I have no energy to vote again,” said Maya Kleinman, 45, a biologist in the city of Rehovot in central Israel.

“I feel I am being forced to vote. I feel I am being held hostage by small and foul-smelling politics.” Netanyahu is currently on trial for corruption, and his fitness for office is likely to again frame the election on November 1 as a referendum on his character.

The campaign is expected to sharpen a debate about the role of both the Jewish far-Right camp in Israel and the country’s Arab minority within governing coalitions. To return to power, Netanyahu will need the support of a hardline nationalist alliance that many consider extremist. On the other side, the departing governing coalition would most likely need the continued support of a small Islamist party to succeed.

New York Times News Service