Bennett accuses Liberman and Lapid of pumping up enlistment bill crisis

Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett accuses Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid of disingenuously using the coalition crisis over the ultra-Orthodox conscription bill to gain publicity.

“We said a week ago that it was a ‘fake crisis’ and we stand behind it,” Bennett tells his faction meeting at the Knesset.

“But beyond that, in recent days we have seen ‘fake leadership’ which prefers to stand behind publicity polls and populist stunts than what they know is right,” he adds, referring to Liberman and Lapid who have vehemently opposed the bill.

Arguing that the best way to encourage conscription in the ultra-Orthodox community is via a slow and gentle process of inclusion, Bennett, mirroring a tactic used by Netanyahu, held up a graph to show the increase over the past decade.

“Lapid knows this very well and so does Liberman because it’s what the army says. We need to continue this process, not uproot it,” he says.

Bennett adds that he “supports the prime minister’s efforts to end the crisis.”

Asked about his apparent about-face from comments made yesterday accusing Netanyahu of exacerbating the crisis, Bennett says: “Yesterday afternoon we saw a change in the prime minister’s behavior and it appears that he pulled up his sleeves” and started to act “like the responsible adult.”

— Raoul Wootliff