Haredi parties threaten to bolt coalition unless conscription exemption bill advances

The United Torah Judaism party’s Degel Hatorah faction threatened on Monday to withdraw from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, warning that it will do so within the day unless it is presented with a draft of a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service.

Speaking with Channel 12 news, a party source cautioned that “the next few hours are definitely the last to save the prime minister. If a draft law is not submitted in the next few hours, the decision will be made.”

In making its threat, Degel Hatorah joined fellow ultra-Orthodox party Shas, which reportedly threatened to resign from the government within days, as the July 27 start of the Knesset summer recess approaches without any progress having been made on the conscription issue.

While some reports said that Shas would bolt after UTJ, others indicated that the two parties are fully coordinated and will quit at the same time. Both parties were set to discuss the issue during their respective faction meetings Monday afternoon.

Despite the fact that Shas has previously worked behind the scenes to avoid dissolving the government, a UTJ source told Channel 12 that Shas chairman Aryeh Deri was “applying very heavy pressure to immediately withdraw from the coalition” — apparently on UTJ — and “doesn’t want to do it alone, so that they don’t say he is the one bringing down the government.”

According to national broadcaster Kan, two of Degel Hatorah’s senior rabbinic leaders sent a letter to party MKs instructing them that “in the absence of a law by this evening, Degel Hatorah will immediately withdraw from the government.”

The letter was sent by rabbis Moshe Hirsch, the dean of Bnei Brak’s Slabodka yeshiva, and Dov Lando, the senior leader of the so-called Lithuanian stream of non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodoxy. Both are members of the faction’s ruling Council of Torah Sages.

The report did not mention the party’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction.

Last week, UTJ called on Netanyahu to “immediately” pass a bill broadly exempting Haredi males from IDF conscription, after it emerged that the latest version of the controversial legislation was dropped from this week’s Knesset agenda.

“The attorney general continues to persecute Torah students, but the blame lies solely with the government, which should have passed the conscription law as it pledged in the coalition agreements,” a spokesman for party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf told The Times of Israel, referring to a recently unveiled plan to increase enforcement against draft evaders.

“We expect the prime minister to honor the agreements and immediately complete the settlement of the status of Torah students in the Land of Israel,” the spokesman said.

While the Haredi parties’ exit would leave Netanyahu’s 67-member coalition suddenly lacking a ruling majority in the 120-member Knesset, Kan has reported that Shas and UTJ — which have 18 Knesset seats combined — do not intend to topple the government at this time.

Instead, the two parties will initially support the government from the outside while continuing to push for the legislation that they have made a cornerstone of their policy over the last year — since a landmark High Court of Justice ruling that there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting yeshiva students blanket exemptions from army service.

The coming three-month Knesset recess would give Netanyahu time to try and resolve the issue.

According to a coalition source, a vote on the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill was removed from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s agenda for this week. The vote would have allowed the bill to be referred to the plenum for the final two readings necessary for it to become law.

Haredi lawmakers had hoped to pass the bill into law before the Knesset goes on recess at the end of the month.

Neither the Haredi parties nor members of the committee have yet to be presented with a full draft of the revised legislation, whose sanctions on draft dodgers were reportedly watered down by committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) last month as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent the Haredim from voting in favor of dissolving the Knesset.

After reaching an agreement in principle on Edelstein’s compromise terms to head off that crisis on June 12, the ultra-Orthodox parties announced that “understandings have been reached regarding the principles for the law preserving the status of yeshiva students,” adding that “another few days” were needed to “complete the final version” of the legislation.

The following day, however, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program, setting off a 12-day war and delaying any discussion of the legislation in the Knesset.

Since the end of the Iran campaign, Edelstein has delayed presenting the bill, trying the Haredi parties’ patience.

To pressure Edelstein into presenting the revised bill, both Haredi parties have been boycotting votes on coalition legislation in the Knesset plenum, with UTJ stating that it would not vote with the coalition until the draft law is presented.