This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

There’s been considerable political turmoil these past 24 hours about the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party declaring it is no longer part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “bloc,” and that it will be pushing to dissolve the Knesset, triggering “early” elections.

Members of Netanyahu’s own Likud party, and the far-right Otzma Yehudit party of Itamar Ben Gvir, have been imploring UTJ to think again. All are anxiously watching the second ultra-Orthodox party, Aryeh Deri’s Shas, to see whether it will join forces with UTJ, and the Knesset’s anti-Netanyahu parties, to muster a majority and bring down the government in the coming weeks or even days.

But the ostensible drama of “early elections” is relatively banal. And UTJ’s declared collapse of trust in, and severance of political cooperation with, Netanyahu is overstated and misleading.

In terms of election timing, Israel must by law hold elections, in any case, by October 27, and the law provides for a minimum 90-day election campaign. That means that even if the Knesset is dissolved this month, elections could not be held before late August. Among the many reasons why Israel almost never goes to the polls in August (1961 was the sole exception) are anticipated low turnout in summer and the logistics of opening schools, which serve widely as polling stations, during the holidays. So that means “early” elections are unlikely to be held before September — just a few weeks before the mandatory deadline, a minor change in the lifespan of a coalition that, most unusually, has managed to govern for almost its entire four-year term.

The ultra-Orthodox parties — UTJ and Shas — are widely understood to want an election date sometime after yeshiva students return from the summer break in mid-August and near to early September’s High Holy Days, when religious sensibilities and turnout are likely to be at their height. Since elections are generally held on Tuesdays — the default day to avoid Sabbath desecration surrounding the process — that brings us to September 1 or 15; other dates that month are too proximate to the High Holy Days and Sukkot.

Netanyahu, by contrast, is reported to prefer the legal default date and deadline of October 27. But his calculations are complex, and he can see potential benefit in an earlier date.

The PM’s considerations

Going to the public on or close to October 27 would give Netanyahu’s coalition maximal time to blitz through key components of its legislative agenda, including laws to weaken the independence of media, the judiciary and other law enforcement agencies, notably stripping the critical role of attorney general of almost all of its power and authority.

The later the date, morever, the greater the potential for Netanyahu to achieve strategic success in the thus-far unsuccessful effort if not to trigger the collapse of the would-be genocidal regime in Iran, then at the very, very least to block its path to a nuclear........

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