Deri told cabinet that negotiating team shouldn’t fly to Doha on Shabbat for hostage talks – report

Shas leader Aryeh Deri reportedly told Friday’s cabinet meeting that a delegation should not fly to Doha on the Jewish Sabbath for talks on a potential hostage and truce deal as it was not a case of pikuah nefesh, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

Pikuah nefesh is the rabbinic principle that the preservation of life takes precedence over nearly everything, including the strictures governing Shabbat.

According to the report, Deri said that the delegation should only depart once the security cabinet has met on Sunday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied reports that he sought to push off making a decision on the negotiating team’s mandate for the Doha talks, and refused to hold a meeting on Saturday on the matter, thereby apparently delaying the departure of the team led by Mossad chief David Barnea.

Deri is not an official member of the war cabinet, but attends as an observer at the invitation of Netanyahu. The Shas leader’s appointments as minister of health and the interior were shot down last year by the High Court, which it ruled that appointing a man with multiple criminal convictions for financial offenses as a minister was “unreasonable in the extreme.”

When asked for comment by the outlet on his reported comments on the Doha delegation’s departure, Deri’s office said that “as a general rule, we will not address any issue from the cabinet meetings.”

The Kan report was not the first in recent days revealing that pikuah nefesh was apparently not deemed relevant by politicians in the case of a potential hostage deal.

Cabinet talks on a potential agreement were reportedly wrapped up Friday afternoon because the Jewish Sabbath was approaching, leading Opposition Leader Yair Lapid to question on social media: “If this isn’t pikuah nefesh, what is?”