From the Liveblog of
Monday, October 14, 2024
Deri says past year brought ‘miracles and wonders,’ hints chances for hostage deal rising
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"
Shas party chairman Aryeh Deri hints that the return of the hostages may once again be a possibility despite little recent progress on stalled efforts to reach a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas, and also argues that the past year has been a time of “miracles and wonders.”
In an interview with party mouthpiece HaDerech, Deri states that “there is a space of opportunity that has been created over the past month, in light of all the events, to bring them home, and I will not expand any further than that.”
“This is the mitzvah of redeeming prisoners, the greatest mitzvah, and we need to pray with all our might” that God “will show us great miracles, and we will get to see the hostages soon,” he continues.
He adds that “we are beginning to understand the magnitude of the miracles and wonders of this difficult year.”
According to the Walla news site, Shin Bet security service director Ronen Bar met with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel in Cairo in an effort to jumpstart talks, but the talks did not reach any breakthrough.
Turning to the issue of the ultra-Orthodox draft, Deri states that he hopes the issue can be settled “in the coming weeks.”
Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, the head of the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, reportedly threatened last week to block the passage of the 2025 budget unless a Haredi army exemption bill is passed in the next three weeks. Failure to pass a budget would bring down the government.
In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have promised to advance a bill facilitating sweeping exemptions for Haredi men from military service by the end of the month.
Speaking with HaDerech, Deri does not hinge his party’s support for the government on the legislation, but says he hopes legislation can be passed to enable yeshiva students “to sit and study without interruption” and without cuts to their subsidies.
“You have to understand, if you look at the budget, each day of battle costs us more than the entire annual budget of the entire Torah world,” he states. “We believe that every day of study prevents more days of battle.”
