The National Union Party of Israeli Minister Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, submitted today a bill on the dissolution of parliament and the holding of early elections.
The center-right party did so after Gantz’s request to start the process because there is broad support for holding elections before October, one year after the October 7, 2023, attack from Gaza on southern Israel.
The conservative Likud party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded that “the dissolution of the unity government would be a reward for Yahya Sinwar (the leader of Hamas in Gaza), a capitulation under international pressure and a fatal blow to the efforts to free the hostages”, reports AFP.
The National Union Party joined Netanyahu’s government shortly after the October 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot, both former army chiefs, have since been members of the war cabinet.
The next parliamentary elections in Israel are planned for October 2026.
More than 36,200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 81,700 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7.
Israel has been accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in its latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately end its operation in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip where more than a million displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.
