(Bloomberg) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to stabilize his tottering government after the resignation of the defense minister, as a key meeting Friday with a second junior partner ended without resolution.

A person close to Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who had threatened to topple the coalition by withdrawing his party’s eight lawmakers if he’s not given the defense portfolio, said the two agreed the government couldn’t be saved and a date for early elections would be set Sunday.

In a statement from his office, Netanyahu said no such decision had been taken and he would meet with heads of other coalition parties Nov. 18 in an effort to keep his conservative government alive.

The coalition was thrown into turmoil Wednesday when Defense Minister Avigdor 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.

‘Critical Challenges’

According to Netanyahu’s statement, the prime minister told Bennett, who also pushes a harder military line against Hamas militants in Gaza, that he wanted to keep for himself the powers of the defense minister due to “critical challenges facing the state.”

However, he added, “The prime minister stressed that it was to important to make every effort to maintain the right-wing government and not make a historic mistake.”

Any early elections aren’t expected to produce a significantly changed parliament. Polls taken before the political crisis erupted predicted little change in the Knesset’s right-left divide. Elections currently are slated for November 2019 but Israeli commentators expect them to be moved up to March or May.

Liberman’s resignation left Netanyahu in control of just 61 of 120 seats in Parliament, but he had governed with such a razor-thin majority before. Bennett, a political rival courting the same nationalist audience that forms Netanyahu’s base, has been fiercely critical of what he considered the government’s undue restraint in responding to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Corruption Probes

There have been months of speculation about whether Netanyahu would disband an unruly government and seek a popular mandate with corruption allegations hanging over his head.

A two-year-old probe against Netanyahu is inching toward conclusion, with Attorney General Avihai Mandelblit due to decide whether to indict him in multiple cases. Some commentators have reasoned that if the prime minister goes to early elections and wins big, Mandelblit might hesitate to take action against him.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing in the cases against him, contending he’s the victim of a leftist cabal that wants to bring down his conservative government. Polls have shown he’d win an early election, though he is now facing criticism from residents of southern Israel who are furious he agreed to a truce with Gaza Strip militants who bombarded them with rocket and mortar fire earlier this week.

It was that cease-fire and attempts to reach a long-term truce with Gaza that Liberman cited in his resignation statement, calling them “a capitulation to terrorism.” He also faulted Netanyahu’s decision to let Qatar transfer $15 million to Gaza to ease the dire humanitarian situation there, saying the money would support families of militants who attacked Israel.

The current government was formed in 2015, and would be the last in a long line of Israeli coalitions to fall apart before their terms expired.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.