Haredi leaders said to tell UTJ to bolt coalition; opposition parties to submit Knesset dissolution

Haredi leaders have reportedly told their representatives in the United Torah Judaism party that they should withdraw from the government over its failure to pass legislation that would exempt yeshiva students from the draft, leading opposition parties to announce they will submit a bill for the Knesset to be dissolved.

According to Hebrew-language media reports, senior officials from United Torah Judaism said that last night’s meeting with Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein was a failure, and that Degel Hatorah chair MK Moshe Gafni has received instructions from his party’s spiritual leaders to leave the coalition and work to dissolve the government.

Degel Hatorah is one of the two factions that make up the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party — the other one UTJ chair Yitzchak Goldknopf’s Agudat Yisrael, was reportedly already pushing to advance a bill to dissolve the Knesset and force new elections.

“After Knesset members last night briefed [Rabbi Moshe] Hirsch on the details of the meeting with Edelstein, it is clear that there is no progress at all on the draft issue. Accordingly, the rosh yeshiva will order withdrawal from the coalition in the near future,” a statement on behalf of Hirsch, the dean of Bnei Brak’s Slabodka yeshiva and a member of Degel Hatorah’s Council of Torah Sages, reportedly reads.

In response to the reports, opposition parties Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and The Democrats say they will submit a bill for the Knesset’s dissolution next Wednesday, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a week to try to resolve the issue, in addition to the period it would take for the bill to be voted on by the parliament.

Both Shas and UTJ, the two Haredi parties in the Knesset, had demanded the passage of the controversial military draft legislation by the Shavuot holiday, which this year ended on June 2, warning that any delay would endanger the government’s continued existence.

With seven mandates, UTJ does not have the ability to bring down the government by itself. Any effort to do so on its part would require the active cooperation of Shas. Netanyahu’s coalition currently holds 68 out of 120 seats in the Knesset.

There has been no public comment from Shas on the development.

While the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, have repeatedly backed down from previous ultimatums, recent developments — including IDF plans to increase the number of draft orders sent to young ultra-Orthodox men — have seen their relationship with Netanyahu approaching a breaking point.