Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, left, speaks during a joint statement with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, June 20, 2022.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s announcement on Monday that the government will dissolve and head for new elections caught few observers off guard, following weeks of political uncertainty amid a spate of defections that left Bennett’s coalition government in the minority. “I don’t think this news should come as a real surprise to people who’ve been paying attention, because once you started having these defections, anything could have blown it apart,” Susie Gelman, board chair of the Israel Policy Forum, told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.

Strategic move: Rob Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, added that Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid — who will take over as prime minister until a new government is formed — likely decided it would be preferable to dissolve the coalition on their own terms and organize elections at a time of their choosing rather than “continue the water torture” of a continually eroding coalition. Bennett may have determined that it was preferable for him not to be prime minister at the time of the coming election, allowing him to focus on reinforcing his support among his base, while Lapid will now have the opportunity to prove himself capable of leading the country, Satloff said.

The weight: The coalition collapsed under “the sheer weight of contradictions and anomalies inherent within it,” explained Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Given the odds arrayed against it, Miller said that the coalition had “fared remarkably well” and “lasted longer than many would have imagined.” Miller called the government’s collapse “a bad sign” for the long-term future of U.S.-Israel relations and Israel’s relationship with the U.S. Jewish community, which he said had improved overall under Bennett. He said the situation could turn positive if Lapid manages to form a new, centrist or center-left coalition without some of the further right and religious forces in the current government.

Elections x 2: With elections expected at the end of October, dynamics could be shaped in part by the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections in November, David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute, said. Should Republicans retake Congress, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is eyeing a return to the premiership, might take a more partisan line. If the Israeli elections take place before the midterms, Netanyahu might “play it more safe.”

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Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid speaks during a joint statement with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, June 20, 2022.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s surprise announcement Monday night that he will disperse his increasingly disunified coalition after just over one year in office sent Israel’s political sphere into a tailspin. The announcement cast uncertainty on how the interim government might function in dealing with immediate and sensitive foreign and domestic issues as the country heads into its fifth election cycle in less than four years, analysts told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash.

On issues foreign: Yair Lapid, the current foreign minister, will continue in that post and deal with the bulk of foreign policy matters, including greeting President Joe Biden when he visits Israel on July 13. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said on Monday that Biden’s trip “will happen as planned.” The disarray in Israel and its uncertain political future may have an impact on how the country is viewed from the outside. Reports that Biden’s visit to the region, which includes a stop in Saudi Arabia, could bring the two Middle East countries closer to normalizing ties may be put on hold until there is more political stability in Israel. Any hopes for restarting a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians will also need to wait until it is clear who will sit in the prime minister’s seat. And technical processes, such as Israel’s attempts to join America’s Visa Waiver Program, which will exempt Israelis from stringent visa requirements, will now slow down.

And domestic: Shalom Lipner, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who spent nearly three decades working in the Prime Minister’s Office, told JI that while “the transitional government will not be able to pass any important legislation like the 2023 budget, it will have a freer hand to govern without the constant threat of no-confidence motions or Knesset members threatening to topple it.”

Staying the course: Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that the political instability of the past three and a half years had made it difficult to persevere in the domestic arena, but the country’s foreign policy has seen continuity. “The main security issues on the agenda are not largely contentious or controversial and that is why nothing much will change,” said Plesner. “Fortunately, we had a government that functioned very well for most of the past year, and this meant that key nominations of professionals in the civil service were filled, the budget was passed and it bought time and oxygen before we dive into a new chapter in the political crisis,” he added.

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Jen Kiggans and Jarome Bell

Nearly eight months after Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia and reversed years of Democratic gains, Virginia voters go to the polls today. Republican voters’ pick in one key district could decide whether their party regains control of Congress this year, activists and experts tell Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.

Pickup opportunity: Rep. Elaine Luria, a Norfolk Democrat who flipped a longtime Republican seat in 2018, is seen as among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country. Republicans only need to flip five Democratic seats to retake the majority in 2023. “I think the 2nd District is the clearest Republican pickup,” said Ian Cummings, who serves on the executive committee of the Norfolk Republican Party.

Different visions: The two leading Republicans vying to take on Luria represent two different visions of the future of GOP politics. Jen Kiggans, a nurse and former Navy helicopter pilot who was elected to the state Senate in 2019, and Jarome Bell, a former Naval petty officer, both espouse conservative views. Kiggans and Bell have both argued that the results of the 2020 election should be audited to root out what they each claim was voter fraud.

Pushed right: Bell has adopted a harder line in his approach to the matter. In September, he tweeted that people convicted of voter fraud should face execution. “Jarome Bell has pushed the whole primary way to the right, and pushed Kiggans way to the right, as well,” said Bob Holsworth, managing director at DecideSmart, a Virginia-based political consulting firm. “She’s worried about the Trump base. Kiggans has supported the call for a forensic audit of the Virginia election in 2020, which no one believed was fraudulent. So she moved in that direction.”

Tricky strategy: The Virginia Democratic Party has sent out mailers attempting to boost Bell, part of a national trend to boost primary candidates that are further right in an effort to win over independents and center-right Republicans in the general. But the strategy may backfire, especially in the event of a major Republican wave.

Elsewhere in Virginia: Virginia Republicans will also pick a candidate to take on Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who like Luria has fashioned herself a political moderate. The leading candidates in the 7th District, which moved north from the Richmond suburbs to a more exurban rural base during redistricting, are a state Senator and Army veteran, a former Green Beret, and a Prince William board supervisor.

Other races we’re watching: In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser hopes to fend off several primary challengers looking to unseat the two-term Democratic mayor. And in Alabama, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Katie Britt head to a runoff in the state’s GOP Senate primary. Brooks had been endorsed by former President Donald Trump in 2021, but Trump pulled the endorsement in March and threw his weight behind Britt, an attorney and businesswoman, earlier this month.