TEL AVIV, Israel �� Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fought to save his tottering government after his defense minister resigned, pinning his hopes on a meeting Sunday with a wavering coalition ally.
Netanyahu is to meet with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who has urged the prime minister to call early elections after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman's departure last week left the government in control of just 61 of 120 parliamentary seats.
It's not possible to govern with such a narrow coalition, which will be subject to constant pressures from its partners, Kahlon said in an interview Saturday on Hadashot News. Still, he said he would keep an open mind for Sunday's meeting with Netanyahu.
"Maybe he'll pull a rabbit out of his hat," Kahlon said. "Although for a long time it seems there has been no rabbit and no hat."
The coalition was thrown into turmoil when Liberman resigned and pulled his Yisrael Beitenu party's five legislators out of the government, saying Netanyahu wasn't responding forcefully enough to rockets fired into Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who also urges a harsher line on Gaza, demanded the defense portfolio after Liberman left. In a meeting Friday, Netanyahu said he would keep the defense portfolio for himself for now, according to a statement from Netanyahu's office.
Bennett said on Israel's "Meet the Press" Saturday that he and Netanyahu had agreed that the government could not survive and early elections would have to be called. A Netanyahu spokesman said no such decision had been made and the government should serve out its final year. Elections are scheduled for November 2019.
If elections are moved up, the current government, formed in 2015, would be the latest in a long line of coalitions to fall apart before their terms expired. Israeli commentators predicted that elections would be moved up to March.
The Labor Party's current leader, Avi Gabbay, said he'd be glad if elections were called _ "the earlier, the better."
A 2-year-old probe investigation of Netanyahu is inching toward a conclusion, with Attorney General Avihai Mandelblit due to decide whether to indict him in multiple cases.
Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing in the cases against him, contending that he's the victim of a leftist cabal that wants to bring down his conservative government. He's now also facing criticism from residents of southern Israel, who feel the government has not done enough to neutralize rocket fire and other threats from the Gaza Strip.
