Israel’s government was in turmoil on Friday after one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main coalition partners said there was “no possibility” the government could keep working and called for early elections.

The Right-wing Jewish Home party called for the government to dissolve itself and being setting a date for elections after Mr Netanyahu refused to give them control of the defence ministry.

The party stopped short of pulling out of the government, which would have triggered an immediate collapse, but there seemed to be little prospect of holding the fractious coalition together.

As the coalition started teeter, Mr Netanyahu issued a last-minute call for unity and warned that it would be “a historic mistake” for Right-wing parties to bring down his government.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue to talk with coalition leaders on Sunday so that they will not make a historic mistake of toppling a right-wing government,” said a spokesman for Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Mr Netanyahu raised the spectre of the collapse of a Likud-led government in 1992, which led to Labour taking power and signing the Oslo Accords agreement with the Palestinians, to the fury the Israeli Right.