Naftali Bennett

• Israel’s parliament dissolves forcing country to hold its fifth election in four years.
• Yair Lapid takes over as caretaker prime minister at midnight.
• Raam party chief Mansour Abbas says his party will continue advocating for Arab society.

Israeli lawmakers dissolved parliament on Thursday forcing the country to hold its fifth election in less than four years, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid taking over as caretaker prime minister at midnight.

The centrist Lapid embraced outgoing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, whose year in charge of an unwieldy eight-party coalition was ultimately undone by ideological divisions.

Lapid, whose Hungarian-born father survived the Holocaust, went immediately to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre after the parliament vote.

“There, I promised my late father that I will always keep Israel strong and capable of defending itself and protecting its children,” the 58-year-old said in a statement.

The newly called election set for November 1 marks another sign that Israel remains mired in an unprecedented era of political gridlock, with early opinion polls indicating the results may again be inconclusive.

The religious-nationalist Bennett has said he will not contest the vote and is stepping back from politics, tweeting the Hebrew word “Toda” (thank you), after lawmakers sealed his departure from office. He later hosted Lapid for a short handover ceremony.

Hawkish former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured that he and his allies — extreme-right nationalists and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties — will finally rally a majority, following what he described on Thursday as a “failed (coalition) experiment”.

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