News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) The first cabinet meeting of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's new government will be asked on Sunday to ratify a package of electoral and governmental reforms aimed at reducing the number of parties in future Knessets and making it more difficult to bring down a government. The ministers will be asked to approve introducing legislation that would raise the threshold of votes needed to receive Knesset representation from the current 2 percent of votes cast. The number of MKs needed to dissolve the House would be raised to 80, and a no-confidence motion would only be allowed to pass if there were an alternative government with majority support.

Both the cabinet and a special session of the Knesset will convene on Sunday and Monday to extend the deadline to pass the 2009 state budget. By law, a new government that took over before a state budget was passed falls automatically if it does not pass the budget within 45 days from the date the government was formed.