Opposition lawmakers celebrated Monday after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced their intention to dissolve the Knesset, triggering fresh elections.
Leaders of right-wing and religious opposition parties gathered in opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s Knesset office in the evening for talks following the development.
Netanyahu, the former prime minister who leads the Likud party, said in a video posted to social media: “This is an evening of great news for millions of citizens.”
“After a year of a determined campaign by the opposition in the Knesset, with great suffering in the Israeli public, it is clear to everyone that the most wretched government in the history of the country has reached an end,” he said.
“My friends and I will form a broad national government led by Likud.”
In a later statement to the cameras, Netanyahu rejected Bennett’s claim that he’s acted out of selflessness in forming and also dissolving the current government as a “charade” and “brainwashing.” He claimed that “everyone is smiling” at the imminent fall of the government.
He said he was preparing for elections but did not rule out an alternative government in the current Knesset if additional right-wing MKs drop their “personal boycott” of him.
Likud MK Miri Regev wrote that Bennett and Lapid were like “bankrupt” businessmen. “Your story is over,” she tweeted. “The Israeli public has understood exactly who you are. Go home.”
Her fellow party member MK Miki Zohar wrote: “At last, this government will pass from the world.”
MK Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party tweeted that soon, “Jewish unity, Zionism and true nationalism will lead the country.” His fellow faction member, MK Itamar Ben Gvir said: “At last, this dangerous government is going home.
“We will establish a fully, fully right-wing government that will restore security to the streets,” he tweeted.
Leader of the opposition’s United Torah Judaism party MK Moshe Gafni tweeted a part of a traditional Jewish blessing to mark new beginnings, thanking God, “who granted us life and sustained us and brought us to this time.”
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