Israel's governing coalition has been hanging on the ropes for several weeks and has yet to take a beating.

Now the leaders have decided to throw in the towel.

In a joint statement, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid announced that they will table a bill dissolving the Knesset next Monday.

It was "not an easy moment," Bennett said, but it was the right decision for Israel.

"Believe me, there isn't a stone that we haven't turned over," said the prime minister, who celebrated his one-year anniversary exactly a week ago.

Christian Meier

Political correspondent for the Middle East and Northeast Africa.

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The premature dissolution of parliament would result in the Israelis voting for the fifth time in three and a half years, probably at the end of October.

Two elections in spring and autumn 2019 were unsuccessful.

The election in spring 2020 then led to a coalition between the political opponents Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, which did not even last nine months.

The spring 2021 election finally produced the current eight-party coalition.

It was dubbed the "government of change" by Bennett.

Above all, however, it was a coalition to vote Benjamin Netanyahu out of office, who had ruled since 2009 but had increasingly polarized the country.

The eight parties have nothing else in common ideologically.

In the coalition there are opponents of the Israeli occupation policy, for example in the left-secular Meretz or in the Islamic-conservative Raam, and supporters of settlements, for example in Bennett's Yamina.

In the middle were some conservative Zionist parties like Lapid's Yesh Atid and Defense Minister Gantz's Blue and White.

Lapid is to conduct government affairs

Several predetermined breaking points soon became apparent.

Still, by spring it looked as if the unusual coalition was working better than expected.

They were welded together not least by the fear of a return to Netanyahu, who, as the leader of the opposition, was constantly breathing down the neck of the government.

Then, however, two members of parliament declared their withdrawal from the coalition – and the slim majority of 61 of the 120 Knesset votes was lost.

The opposition courted other coalition MPs, most recently Nir Orbach of Bennett's Yamina party.

He apparently saw no future for the "coalition of change" after it failed two weeks ago to pass legislation extending certain settlements for West Bank settlers.

In fact, it was a routine

Netanyahu's calculations paid off: the prospect of the regulations expiring on July 1 triggered panic among coalition members like Orbach.

In addition, the process strengthened the feeling that meaningful cooperation with the MPs von Meretz and Raam, some of whom had also voted against the law or abstained, was no longer possible.

The left-wing parties in the coalition, in particular, repeatedly buckled in order to allow right-wing legislative initiatives to pass.