From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Deri: Edelstein ‘wants to screw Bibi over’; Edelstein: I don’t want the government to fall
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"
During this afternoon’s Shas faction meeting, chairman Aryeh Deri declared that the ultra-Orthodox party will support United Torah Judaism’s effort to dissolve the Knesset, according to Hebrew media.
“There is no choice left. We don’t like it, but we need to support the dissolution of the Knesset,” the Israel Hayom daily quotes Deri as saying.
According to the Ynet news site, Deri also harshly attacks Likud lawmaker Yuli Edelstein, whose Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman is currently working on a bill to regulate Haredi conscription.
Edelstein is “screwing everything up. He wants to screw Bibi over and bring down his coalition out of personal revenge. He’s the one who’s working to bring down the government and is dragging the entire right into elections… because he didn’t get a ministerial position,” the site quotes Deri as stating.
“We’re going to elections,” he states.
Edelstein has pledged that any law coming out of his Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee would levy sanctions on draft dodgers, a position he maintained during last-ditch talks with Haredi representatives last night.
The two sides’ failure to come to terms led the spiritual leaders of Degel HaTorah, one of the two factions that make up the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, to instruct their MKs this morning to introduce a bill to dissolve the Knesset.
In a tweet, Edelstein asserts that the “enlistment law I presented last night at the meeting is the same draft that we have been discussing for over a year. A law without effective personal sanctions, high draft targets and a high rate of increase [of the number of draftees] — is not draft but evasion, and I opposed it all the way.”
While he is committed to easing the burden on Israel’s reservists and to expanding the IDF’s recruitment base, Edelstein writes that he is “not in favor of dissolving the coalition or the government, and I do not share in the hatred of our ultra-Orthodox brothers.”
“We must not stop the work on the various fronts and engage in politics. The order of the hour is to promote an effective and genuine conscription law. After 77 years, we can make history,” Edelstein adds.
The Times of Israel Community.