One week after lawmakers voted to approve a bill to dissolve the Knesset, potentially triggering slightly earlier elections, coalition whip Ofir Katz (Likud) on Wednesday announced that his Knesset House Committee will discuss the legislation next Monday before immediately sending it to the plenum for the first of three readings needed for it to pass into law.

The legislation passed its first reading 110-0 last week but was not immediately advanced further, with the coalition initially appearing to be in no rush to pass it. In response, Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben-Ari wrote to Katz yesterday demanding that the bill be immediately placed on the committee’s agenda.

The decision to pass the bill came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s erstwhile allies in the United Torah Judaism party announced that they would push to dissolve the Knesset over the coalition’s failure to pass legislation codifying military conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Their decision was made after Netanyahu told Haredi MKs that the coalition currently doesn’t have the votes to pass the draft exemption legislation, and reportedly asked them to agree to shelve the bill until after the elections.

In response to UTJ’s move to dissolve the Knesset and in an effort to control both the legislative process and the timing of the elections, Katz submitted his own legislation calling for new elections to be held.

The dissolution bill — which was cosponsored by lawmakers from UTJ, Shas, New Hope, Religious Zionism, and the Otzma Yehudit parties — does not specify an election date — instead stipulating that it be set by the Knesset........

© The Times of Israel