The vote on the dispersal of the Knesset was stalling on Monday as the parliament could not agree on a date for the next elections.
The Knesset House Committee was supposed to convene Monday morning to discuss 11 bills to disperse the parliament, passed in last week's preliminary readings. The committee must approve the legislation before it is tabled for the first official reading, but the discussion has already been pushed off several times.
The committee is headed by a rebel coalition MK Nir Orbach from the Yamina party, who has previously said he wants to delay the dissolution of the Knesset in order to allow the right-wing bloc to form an alternative government in the current Knesset without dissolving it - thus avoiding Israel's fifth snap elections in three years.
The coalition, however, wants to kick off the elections campaign as soon as possible, and will try to take advantage of its' majority in the committee to transfer the discussion on the legislation to the Constitution, Law and Justice committee - bypassing Orbach.
If the bills to disperse the Knesset are approved, a date for the election day will be proposed, prior to its second and third reading in the plenum.
The opposition, still optimistic such a proposal can be avoided by forming a government in the upcoming days, demands the elections take place on October 25. The date signifies the last day of vacation for Israel's Yeshiva students, which means they can easily access the voting ballots in their hometowns. The coalition, however, prefers November 1 or 8 as a favorable date for the national vote.
If no agreement is reached by the end of Monday, the official dissolution of the Knesset is set to be postponed until Wednesday, and potentially as late as next week.
In the meantime, the coalition is pushing on with the so-called defendant's bill, which would prevent opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu from forming government. The bill, proposing to prohibit a person facing charges for crimes punishable by more than three years in prison from serving as prime minister, is still being discussed the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.
The MKs are simultaneously continue to formulate a list of bills that will be tabled for a vote immediately after the Knesset is dissolved. While a consensus is reached regarding many of the topics, the MKs are unable to overcome the disagreements on many crucial legislations.
Most of the debates surround the West Bank regulations extending the Israeli law to the Jewish settlement. The coalition wants to approve the bill immediately after the Knesset is dissolved, while the opposition is still refusing to give in - which is what dismantled the government in the first place.
In his last cabinet meeting as prime minister, Naftali Bennett on Sunday called on ministers to "take advantage of every day, every hour and every minute that is left in order to clear the table."