Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a major speech Thursday making the case for giving him and the Likud a new mandate, a day after the Knesset dissolved and an early election was set.
Although Netanyahu and his allies won the April 9 election, Netanyahu did not present a coalition by the deadline on Wednesday because of internal squabbling between Yisrael Beytenu and the haredi parties over the issue of haredi conscription.
Netanyahu, rather than inform the president that he had failed to assemble a government and risk losing the job to another MK, decided to take another chance with Israeli voters and call for an early election.
The crisis over haredi conscription beset the coalition talks from the moment negotiations began more than a month ago.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman made it clear that he would not join Netanyahu's fifth government unless the bill to set quotas for haredi conscription was passed without any change to its language, but haredi parties said they could not accept its provisions because it would set penalties on ultra-Orthodox educational institutions and would end the de facto exemption almost all haredi men get upon reaching draft age.
Without Lieberman's five MKs on his side, Netanyahu was unable to secure enough votes to win a confidence vote in the Knesset, forcing him to take the unusual step to change the Knesset makeup.
The bill to dissolve the Knesset was approved by a vote of 75 to 45 late on Wednesday after it became clear that Lieberman was not going to accept a compromise.
