Haredi Shas party again threatens to bolt government over enlistment legislation

The ultra-Orthodox Shas party is once again threatening to resign from the government, according to reports on Sunday, as the end of the Knesset summer session approaches without any progress having been made toward exempting Haredi males from mandatory military service.

The apparent latest attempt to cajole the government into passing the highly contentious legislation was reported by the Kan public broadcaster on Sunday evening, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was said to be meeting with Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, to discuss the bill.

Edelstein, as committee chair, has long blocked the passage of a government-backed bill enshrining the broad exclusion from IDF service for Haredim, but agreed last month to soften some of the harsh sanctions included in his proposed bill, in a last-minute deal with Shas and its fellow Haredi party United Torah Judaism to prevent them from voting in favor of an opposition-backed bill to disperse the Knesset and call early elections.

But as Edelstein’s new, watered-down version of the bill has failed to materialize, having been pulled from the committee’s agenda for this coming week, the Haredi parties have again been running out of patience.

To that end, Kan reported that Shas chair Aryeh Deri has told party officials to begin preparing to resign from the government in the coming days and join the opposition.

The move is being coordinated with UTJ, the report said, and both plan to leave the government at the same time.

While this would leave Netanyahu’s 67-person strong coalition suddenly lacking a ruling majority in the 120-member Knesset, the report said that Shas and UTJ — which have 18 Knesset seats combined — do not intend to topple the government at this moment in 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, ever since the landmark High Court of Justice ruled that there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting yeshiva students blanket exemptions from army service.

If this too proves to be unsuccessful, and there is still no progress on the legislation, Shas and UTJ will then move to dissolve the government, Kan stated.

The Haredi parties have periodically made similar threats and ultimatums throughout the past few years, but haven’t to date followed through.

Hoping to head off this latest crisis sparked by his pious coalition partners, Netanyahu was said to be meeting with Edelstein on Sunday evening. Channel 13 reported that prior to the meeting, Netanyahu had promised Haredi parties that he would demand a progress report from Edelstein on the matter.

The new version of the legislation had been scheduled to come to a vote in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this coming week, but was removed from the agenda. A source familiar with the matter told the Times of Israel that it was removed from the agenda because “at the last minute, there were disagreements.”

The removal of the bill from the committee’s agenda this week is a further delay to the bill’s advancement, less than two weeks ahead of the end of the Knesset summer session on July 27. The parliament will only reconvene in late October.

The Shas threats mark a return to the contentious intra-coalition tensions prior to last month’s Israel-Iran war, when the Haredi parties had also threatened to topple the government over delays in advancing the controversial legislation.

While Edelstein had long pledged to only allow legislation on the matter to pass through his committee if it included sanctions against ultra-Orthodox men who flout enlistment orders, he appeared to back down on some of his demands last month, as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent the Haredim from voting for a bill to dissolve the Knesset.

After reaching an agreement in principle on Edelstein’s compromise terms to head off that crisis, the ultra-Orthodox parties announced on June 12 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. Edelstein and Deri, and reportedly UTJ’s Moshe Gafni as well, were informed about the strikes in advance, knowledge that appears to have contributed to their willingness to compromise.