Edelstein says he won’t accept ultimatums or commit to date on Haredi enlistment bill

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Likud MK Yuli Edelstein says that while he will not “not accept ultimatums from any side” regarding completing work on a bill regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment, within the next two weeks the committee’s “professional legal team” will be able to begin to “formulate a draft” of the controversial legislation.

However, “I cannot commit to a date and I am not willing to commit to a date” because a strict timeline could lead to a bad legislative outcome, he adds.

Edelstein’s comments come only days after a previous declaration in which he announced that the committee will continue hearing testimony and background data for several more sessions before drafting a final version of the bill. That earlier declaration in turn came after the publication of a recording of an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the government plans on passing the bill “with or without” Edelstein.

Addressing the committee, Yaakov (Kobi) Blitstein, deputy director general of the Defense Ministry, says that “the goal of this law is to reach a kind of agreement with the rabbis and the Haredi leadership, whose representatives are here in the Knesset.”