By Patrick Kingsley and Isabel Kershner

JERUSALEM — Israel’s fragile government was thrown into crisis Wednesday (6) after a senior lawmaker quit the coalition, leaving it without a majority in Parliament.

Idit Silman, the chairwoman of the governing coalition and effectively its chief whip, said in a letter to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that she was resigning because coalition colleagues had failed to compromise and that the government’s direction did not reflect the values of the voters who brought her party to power. She said it was time to change course and to try to form a new “national, Jewish, Zionist” coalition with right-wing lawmakers.

The move followed prolonged tensions among leftist, secular, Arab and right-wing members of the coalition, a fractious group of eight parties that agreed to work together in June only after four inconclusive elections in two years had left the country without a functional government or a state budget.

The issue came to a head this week after the left-wing health minister, Nitzan Horowitz, instructed officials to uphold a Supreme Court decision allowing patients to bring leavened bread into hospitals during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover. Silman, a right-wing and religious lawmaker, opposed the measure, which contravenes Jewish law.

“I won’t be able to lend a hand to the damage to the state of Israel’s and the Israeli people’s Jewish character,” Silman said in an earlier statement published by N12, one of Israel’s main private news groups. “I am ending my membership in the coalition, and I will continue to try to persuade my colleagues to return home and to form a right-wing government. I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

The coalition crisis comes at a delicate time after a series of deadly terrorist attacks that had already put pressure on the government. Israel’s security forces remain on high alert amid fears of more unrest and violence over the next month, when the rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter is expected to raise tensions further between Israelis and Palestinians.

Silman’s resignation means the government can count only on the support of 60 members in the 120-seat Parliament, losing the one-seat majority it has had since June.

But her departure from the coalition does not mean the government will immediately collapse or give a parliamentary majority to the opposition, which is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister. Netanyahu welcomed Silman’s decision in a brief video posted on social media, and he encouraged other right-wing members of the coalition to follow her example.

Parliament is also in recess for another five weeks, so it is unlikely there will be a vote of no confidence in the government in the near future. But once it is back in session, the government will be unable to pass legislation without the support of opposition lawmakers, and this could encourage other disgruntled members of the coalition to announce their resignations, as well.

A road back to power for Netanyahu, who is standing trial for corruption, remains complicated and far from assured.

But in a speech to a special debate in Parliament convened Wednesday by the opposition on what it described as government inaction in the face of a wave of terrorism, Netanyahu called for more coalition members “whose hearts are in the right place” to defect and declared that the days of the current government were numbered.

“Join Idit, join us,” Netanyahu said. “Come back home.”

A spokeswoman for Bennett, who is also the head of Silman’s party, Yamina, declined to comment immediately.

Silman did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Bennett was holding a series of meetings Wednesday with other members of Yamina’s parliamentary faction and with the leaders of other parties in the coalition in an effort to shore up the government.

Merav Michaeli, the transport minister and leader of the Labour party, a centre-left coalition partner, described Wednesday’s events as a difficult moment for the government but added that she and her party would “make every effort to keep this coalition working and functioning.”

While the timing of Silman’s resignation was a surprise, the coalition was fragile and few analysts expected it to last a full four-year term. Its one-seat majority always meant that just a single defection would be enough to threaten the government’s collapse.

The eight parties in the coalition shared little in coming together last summer beyond their desire to oust Netanyahu, who had refused to resign despite the corruption charges against him. This prompted some of his long-term allies to leave his party and form their own right-wing factions.

Most of the parties did not initially want to join forces and did so only because they considered the alternatives — either a fifth election or joining forces with Netanyahu — even worse.

Despite their differences, the coalition managed to unite on some key issues — most notably passing the first state budget in more than three years. But they clashed regularly over the rights of and funding for Israel’s Arab minority, the relationship between state and religion, and Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank.

Most groups within the coalition came under intense criticism, and sometimes abuse, from their base for allying with their political opponents and for making compromises that contradicted their political ideals.

Right-wing lawmakers such as Silman were subjected to particularly strong hostility, with protesters picketing her home last summer and bombarding her with offensive text messages.

Arriving at her synagogue in June, she found several posters fixed on a wall outside, each with her portrait overlaid with the slogan that read, “Idit Silman stitched together a government with terror supporters.”

-New York Times