Haredi parties maintain pressure on PM after he claims ‘significant progress’ in talks

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office reported “significant progress” in his negotiations with ultra-Orthodox parties regarding a stymied Haredi draft exemption bill threatening to topple his ruling coalition.

“It was decided to make an effort tomorrow to reach agreement on the issues that remain unresolved,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement released early Friday morning.

The announcement was made after a reportedly seven-hour-long meeting Netanyahu held on the matter with Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, former Shas MK Ariel Attias and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs.

Netanyahu’s ruling coalition entered a crisis earlier this week, when ultra-Orthodox parties United Torah Judaism and Shas began issuing threats to dissolve the Knesset if the coalition does not pass a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service.

Casting doubt on the statement from Netanyahu’s office, UTJ told the Kan public broadcaster that its lawmakers would push forward with a bill to dissolve the legislature and trigger new elections.

“As far as we are concerned, the law to dissolve the Knesset will pass its preliminary reading next week,” said the party in a statement to the outlet.

The spiritual leadership of UTJ’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction already decided Thursday, before the statement from the premier’s office, that it would attempt to bring Israel to another round of elections.

At the end of a meeting in Jerusalem, the leadership said it would back the “immediate dissolution” of the legislature, according to a statement cited by Hebrew media.

UTJ’s non-Hasidic Degel HaTorah faction received similar instructions from its spiritual leadership on Wednesday.

The party’s Sephardic counterpart Shas has also been sharpening its rhetoric against the prime minister over his government’s failure to pass the draft-exemption law.

Shas spokesman Asher Medina wrote a public appeal to Netanyahu in the party’s newspaper HaDerech on Friday morning, threatening the coalition’s collapse should the premier fail to pass the bill.

“The time has come to say — enough. The key is in your hands, Benjamin Netanyahu. You are the leader, you are the one who decides,” he wrote, calling on the premier to “lead the way towards bringing forth a proper, responsible and balanced law.”

“We’ve walked a long road with you. We’ve taken flak for you. Now comes the real test of loyalty,” he continued, issuing a threat: “If your government is important to you — act. Quickly. If you don’t, the noise and commotion outside is no longer just an echo — it’s the election train that’s already left the station.”

With seven seats, UTJ on its own does not have the ability to bring down the government, since Netanyahu’s coalition currently holds 68 out of 120 seats. Any effort to trigger elections on UTJ’s part would require the cooperation of the Shas party.

Shortly after calling on Shas to step up its threats to bring down the government on Thursday, the party’s spiritual leader, former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, derided Likud MK Edelstein as “wicked” for his insistence on tough sanctions on yeshiva students who evade military service.

“His soul is an abomination,” said Yosef, in footage published by Haredi news outlet Kol BaRama from a gathering in Beit Shemesh.

Edelstein, who chairs the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, is currently revising a government-backed law that would sanction draft evaders, has come into the crosshairs of ultra-Orthodox leadership over his insistence on regulating Haredi enlistment.

His stance has proven one of the central obstacles to codifying the Haredi community’s exemption from the draft, which became a major goal for ultra-Orthodox parties since last June, when the High Court of Justice ruled that there was no legal basis for the exemption.

The ruling led the IDF to begin efforts to conscript tens of thousands of previously exempt men into the military, although few have joined.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said this week that IDF officials had told her the military plans to issue 50,000 draft notices to yeshiva students this July, according to a Kan report.

Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted, even as reservists have completed hundreds of days of service since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.

Haredi opponents of the draft argue that it would cripple Torah scholarship and lead to mass secularization of ultra-Orthodox recruits.