Gabbay: Yesh Atid ‘betraying soldiers’ by supporting enlistment bill

Zionist Union leader Avi Gabbay says that fellow opposition party Yesh Atid is betraying Israeli soldiers and its own voters by supporting government legislation addressing ultra-Orthodox military enlistment set for a vote later today.

Speaking at the opening of his party’s faction meeting in the Knesset, Gabbay says that the current proposal will have no effect on the military draft.

“Not one ultra-Orthodox [seminary student] who would not have been enlisted yesterday will be enlisted tomorrow as a result of this law,” he says. “Let’s be honest about that.”

Claiming that the party “effectively joined the government,” Gabbay lashes out at Yesh Atid, whose leader Yair Lapid has vowed that his party will support the bill. A vote by Yesh Atid lawmakers in favor of the bill could allow its passage, despite threats from ultra-Orthodox members of the coalition to oppose the legislation. A failure to pass the bill could portend the government’s collapse.

“This is what it looks like when a party has given up. This is what a betrayal of our soldiers and its own voters looks like, and this is what a party that has switched sides looks like,” Gabbay said of Yesh Atid.

“Yesh Atid has stopped believing that ‘we can beat them.’ Instead, they say ‘we will join them.'”

— Raoul Wootliff