Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday evening that he will move to dissolve the Knesset next week and bring Israel to early elections, approximately half a year before the legally mandated election date in October.

The vote on dissolution is expected to take place early next week, though the exact election date has not yet been set and will be determined following the formal proceedings.

The announcement follows a dramatic 24 hours in Israeli politics. On Tuesday, Hagaon Harav Dov Lando, shlita, the senior Rav of Degel HaTorah — the Litvishe faction of United Torah Judaism — issued a formal directive to the party’s Knesset faction instructing them to work toward dissolving the current Knesset at the earliest opportunity.

In a letter to Degel MKs, Harav Lando wrote that the faction has “no trust in the Prime Minister,” adding that “we no longer feel that we are his partners, and we are not obligated to him.” The letter stated unequivocally that elections must be held as soon as possible, and declared that the right-wing bloc, of which the chareidi parties had been a central pillar, “no longer exists.”

Degel HaTorah chairman R’ Moshe Gafni cited Harav Lando’s directive as a binding instruction governing the faction’s course of action.
The chareidi community’s decision to force the government’s hand reflects months of mounting frustration over the fate of the Giyus law — legislation that would enshrine in law the longstanding arrangement exempting yeshivah students from military service.

The bill, which the chareidi parties regard as a matter of existential importance to the Torah world, was removed from the legislative agenda in March following the outbreak of hostilities between the United States, Israel, and Iran. Despite repeated assurances, coalition leaders have since failed to return it to the floor. Netanyahu’s candid acknowledgment last week that the coalition does not have sufficient votes to pass the legislation was seen by chareidi leaders as the breaking point.

Wednesday’s development appeared to catch even Netanyahu’s own coalition off guard.

Coalition lawmakers had spent much of Tuesday and Wednesday morning urging their chareidi partners not to bring down the government. Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, posted a public appeal calling on the chareidi parties not to “give a gift” to the opposition and insisting that the exemption bill “is ready and can already be advanced tomorrow.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit also urged restraint, warning that early elections would be a mistake.

Nevertheless, with opposition parties — including Yesh Atid, the Democrats, and Yisrael Beytenu — having already submitted their own dissolution bills, and with chareidi support pushing a majority within reach, Netanyahu appears to have concluded that it is better to control the dissolution process than to let the opposition set its terms.

Coalition whip Ofir Katz subsequently submitted a coalition dissolution bill co-sponsored by all of the parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, including UTJ, Shas, New Hope, Religious Zionism, and Otzma Yehudit. Under Knesset rules, a preliminary dissolution vote cannot be held before Monday at the earliest. With both coalition and opposition supporting the move, passage is considered all but assured.