After a stormy and heated debate through the night, not unlike the rest of the 24th Knesset’s brief life, the Knesset voted on the first reading of a bill to dissolve itself. The process should be over by midnight tomorrow, June 29. Thus, the current Israeli parliament will reach its end after just a year and three months, out of a four-year mandate.

Until tomorrow night, the parties are expected to continue squabbling over the precise date for Israelis to head to the polls. The opposition wants the next election to take place Oct. 25, about a week after the fall holidays. The coalition wants to hold it off until Nov. 1.

Right now. however, the opposition is trying to postpone the final vote altogether, claiming that it still hopes to cobble together an alternative government under Benjamin Netanyahu. There is little chance that this will succeed. More likely, Netanyahu gets a certain perverse pleasure out of making Foreign Minister Yair Lapid fret worriedly, as he waits for his chance to fill the prime minister’s office for the next three months.

In the meantime, Netanyahu has also managed to chalk up a symbolic personal victory. Lapid may want to dissolve the Knesset quickly, but he and other members of the coalition agreed to the opposition’s demand not to put a law barring anyone accused of a felony from forming a government. Given the tight schedule, it was unlikely that the law would pass, but the government still bandied it about, if only to goad Netanyahu and the Likud. It was a personal bill, targeting Netanyahu specifically. The coalition just wanted to make sure that everyone knows that the former prime minister is standing trial for felony charges.