Israel is heading toward a new set of elections after a budget extension vote failed to pass on Tuesday.
Parliament has until midnight local time to pass a fiscal package or face snap elections in March, which would be Israel’s fourth set in two years.
Failure would mean the end of a tenuous coalition made by the nation’s right-leaning Likud party and left-leaning Blue and White coalition in April. Under that agreement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have served in his post until November 2021, at which point Benny Gantz, the leader of Blue and White, would have taken over the office.
Some have accused Netanyahu of trying to block a budget agreement in order to get an early collapse of the government, thereby denying Gantz his time as prime minister.
The measure would have extended the budget deadline for another 10 days. It failed by two votes, with three members of Blue and White and one member of Likud voting against it in defiance of their leadership. One Likud member was not present at the vote.
Likud member Michal Shir voted against the extension and afterward announced she was resigning her seat and joining the New Hope party. The New Hope party was started by Gideon Sa’ar, a former Likud education minister, in an effort to challenge Netanyahu’s dominance of the right-wing.
“It’s a whole new ball game,” Reuven Hazan, professor at the Hebrew University’s political science department, told NBC News. “Netanyahu is far more vulnerable now.” Hazan added, “The chances of him not being prime minister are higher than they were.”
At the beginning of December, Parliament voted in favor of a preliminary proposal to dissolve the government. The measure has yet to go into effect, as it needed to be approved by a committee before coming back to the entire body.
