Liberman backs ‘painful’ compromise on Haredi enlistment, after years fighting against their exemption

MK Avigdor Liberman, head of the opposition’s hawkish-secularist Yisrael Beytenu party, said Friday that unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after last week’s election would require “painful” compromises with Haredi parties on enlisting ultra-Orthodox men into the military.

The statement on X confirmed reporting Thursday evening that Liberman has dropped his years-long veto on a government with Haredi parties that seek to codify their constituents’ exemption from military service.

The post also reiterated Liberman’s opposition to the Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc’s apparent alternative — a minority government that relies on outside support from Ra’am and the Joint List, the two Arab parties.

Voters on October 27 had awarded a cumulative 19 of the Knesset’s 120 seats to Ra’am and the Joint List, 48 to parties in the Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc, and 53 to parties in Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Netanyahu’s coalition includes Sephardi Haredi party Shas and Ashkenazi Haredi party United Torah Judaism, which won a collective 13 seats — just enough to hand the majority to Netanyahu’s Zionist opponents, who had made ending the Haredi draft exemption a centerpiece of their campaign.

President Isaac Herzog is expected to give Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot, head of the largest anti-Netanyahu party, the first chance to form a government, after 67 of the 120 incoming MKs from the four Zionist anti-Netanyahu parties and two Arab parties alike backed Eisenkot for premier in Herzog’s post-election consultations this week.

But writing on X Friday, Liberman stressed that his Yisrael Beytenu party would vote against any government that relies on the outside support of Ra’am and the Joint List.

He pointed to the so-called “change government,” where Liberman was finance minister, that unseated Netanyahu in 2021-2022 with a narrow majority that included Ra’am. After internal tensions felled that government, Netanyahu returned to power in the November 2022 election with a solid 64-seat majority.

“A minority government will last much less time, and when it ends we’ll have Netanyahu back with 70 seats for another four years, and from there it’s a short road to annihilation,” Liberman said.

Liberman also rejected the prospect of new elections and insisted that “the Netanyahu era must end.”

On all other issues, he said, it was “permissible and desirable” to compromise, “including on the enlistment law.”

“It’s painful for me, and I know it’s painful for many others,” Liberman said.

“We need to make the maximum effort to form a coalition of 61 lawmakers, without the Joint List and Ra’am. After it’s formed, there’s a high likelihood we’ll be able to add three or four MKs from the Likud,” Netanyahu’s party, Liberman said. “That’s the only strategy that reflects the interest of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people.”

MK Ya’akov Asher, the head of United Torah Judaism, said in a statement following Liberman’s comments that “it’s a pleasure to discover the flexibility of all political actors on the enlistment issue.”

“It’s painful to think how much incitement and brotherly hatred could have been spared from us if that flexibility were apparent in recent years,” Asher said.

He hinted no “political matchmaking” has been proposed yet to UTJ, and said UTJ’s rabbis would have the final word on any offer the party receives.

UTJ, which held steady in the election with seven Knesset seats, declined in the presidential consultations this week to endorse Netanyahu for prime minister, having broken with him over the government’s failure to pass legislation that would enshrine the Haredi draft exemption.

Shas, which dropped from 11 seats to six, has recommended Netanyahu and said it would stick by him after he vowed to pass the legislation in the upcoming term.

Ex-MK Dan Illouz — who bolted Likud over the Haredi draft issue and ran with Yisrael Beytenu — meanwhile said on X that he would “fight against an exemption law even if it comes from the other side,” and called for a “Zionist unity government that will win wars and draft Haredim.” Illouz was No. 10 on Yisrael Beytenu’s candidate slate and fell short of the Knesset after the party won just seven seats.

Separately, Democrats party chief Yair Golan said on X that “substantial progress” had been made toward forming a “national emergency government” as soon as possible. The post came minutes after Liberman’s but did not mention the Yisrael Beytenu chief’s statement.

“I’m more optimistic than I was on the Wednesday morning after the election results,” Golan wrote.

He added that Democrats and Yashar negotiators had met “a number of times this week” and that the Zionist anti-Netanyahu parties were “preparing to take control of the Knesset already on Tuesday.”

Golan, whose left-leaning party is the only Zionist faction that supports an Arab-backed government, also accused Netanyahu of “trying to carry out a coup” and of wreaking havoc on Israel’s relationship with the US.

“I know there’s skepticism” about the possibility of a new government, Golan said. “I’m well aware of the obstacles. But I also know our partners, the responsibility they feel and the real desire to bring change.”