Israel: Lawmaker proposes six-month 'political freeze' as coronavirus battle worsens

Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s Yesh Atid-Telem party has reportedly proposed a six month “political freeze” to prevent fourth elections amid coronavirus pandemic. His views were supported by the lawmaker and former Chief of Defence Staff, Moshe Ya’alon who said that Benny Gantz was “unfit to serve as prime minister” over his willingness to sit in a government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Isreal is most likely to head towards the fourth election in a little over the year after Netanyahu’s rivals failed to form a government. Both the leaders have missed the midnight deadline, on April 15,  to reach a power-sharing deal for a national emergency government. This has resulted in the task of forming Israel’s government falling upon the nation’s parliament for a period of 21 days.

Speaking at the Knesset plenum Yair Lapid said  “People don’t have enough food to put on the table. Businesses are collapsing. People are dying in hospitals. We need to solve the crisis of the lack of tests. We need to start to tackle the economic crisis because no one has really started to tackle it". He went on to say that the creation of a ‘corrupt and bloated’ government was a national disaster adding that the idea of the fourth election was disturbing. 

'Transitional government will continue' 

"So I’m going back to a proposal I suggested before – a simple, clean proposal. To freeze everything for six months. In six months we’ll come back to the same situation. In those six months, instead of dealing with politics, we will work to save the economy and the healthcare system and people’s lives. In those six months, the transitional government will continue. I think it’s a bad government but it won’t be able to do whatever it wants because we’ll control the Knesset. The Knesset will have teeth and it will have a majority,” he added. 

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