A coalition of Israeli factions met on Oct. 8, to both offer support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he agrees to end the war, but also to hold early elections. On the first, the two minor parties of the extremists, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Treasury Minister Bezalal Smotrich, have repeatedly threatened to bring down Netanyahu’s government if he doesn’t yield to their demands. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has, on several occasions in the last two years, offered to Netanyahu to keep him in office should he refuse the political blackmail of his two cohorts; but he has ignored all such offers in the past. His refusals tend to give the lie to the narrative that he has been trapped by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into the business of ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.
On the second matter, after the Oct. 8 meeting, the coalition stated, according to the Jerusalem Post: “The meeting focused on coordinating steps to bring down the government already in the upcoming [Knesset] winter session.” This would mean winning a Knesset vote for early elections. The regularly scheduled election is presently set for October 2026. They stated that “a government of repair and healing” was needed and they discussed plans to “establish a government of repair and healing in Israel.” The opposition was not sufficiently united in the early summer, when they lost a similar vote.
