From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Coalition private member bills removed from agenda as Haredi boycott continues for 3rd week
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
All private member bills sponsored by coalition lawmakers have been removed from the Knesset agenda for the third Wednesday in a row as the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties continue their partial legislative boycott.
All such bills, which were to be brought for preliminary readings in the plenum today, have been removed from the agenda, leaving only opposition bills. The only coalition legislation remaining on the docket is a bill sponsored by UTJ lawmaker Yaakov Asher that is going up for its final two readings.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies have pledged to block the advancement of private member bills sponsored by their coalition partners to protest the government’s failure to advance a controversial bill regulating ultra-Orthodox IDF enlistment.
Both Shas and UTJ have been pushing for the passage of legislation enshrining military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community, after the High Court ruled in June last year that the dispensations that have been in place for decades were illegal, since they were not based in law.
In a WhatsApp message to The Times of Israel, Likud MK Tally Gotliv dismisses the importance of the boycott, insisting that because only private bills were being brought for their preliminary readings there was “no urgency.”
“Government laws that are important undergo full legislative procedures. And it is the right of political parties to exert pressure to advance the conscription law while preserving other public interests,” she writes.
In order to sidestep the oversight of ministerial legal advisers, the current government frequently advances important legislation as private member bills.
Among the legislation withdrawn from consideration since the Haredi boycott began are bills that would dilute the powers of the attorney general and strip the Supreme Court president of the authority to appoint judges to specific cases.
A spokesman for Likud did not respond to a request for comment.
The Times of Israel Community.