The opposition Yesh Atid party initiated a no-confidence gesture Sunday, calling for dissolution of Israel’s parliament and new elections to be held.
Led by Yair Lapid, the centrist-left party plans to present a bill to dissolve the Knesset on Wednesday. If it passes, elections would be held 90 days from the third reading of the bill.
The move comes after an opinion poll, if you can trust the polls, showed Yesh Atid running neck-and-neck with the leading Likud party, bolstering the centrist party’s confidence.
The Likud’s drop in popularity is due in part to deep divisions over how to deal with the dilemma presented by the community of Amona, where a very small part of the land on which it sits might be privately owned.
For that reason, the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled in favor of a petition to destroy the entire town, evicting more than 200 men, women and children from their homes of more than a decade.
Yesh Atid pounced on the opportunity to demonize Likud over its internal divisions and its conflicts within the government coalition as it wrestles with solutions over the issue.
“The citizens of Israel deserve more,” proclaimed a news release from the Yesh Atid central office.
“The government of Israel is entirely self-involved with its own political rifts and with anything but what is important to the citizens of Israel… There have been no substantive discussions in any government body over where the country is heading: Not in the economic, social, diplomatic or security realms,” the party claimed.