Lapid: There will be time for Western Wall deal later

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid appears to back his government’s apparent decision to shelve a compromise agreement that would create a permanent pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Western Wall with representatives of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism sharing a formal oversight role.

Lapid says there will be time to pursue the arrangement some other time. The arrangement was negotiated between Israel and Diaspora leaders over more than three years under former premier Benjamin Netanyahu before Netanyahu froze it under ultra-Orthodox pressure.

“I support the arrangement, but we can’t do everything at once,” Lapid says at a faction meeting. “We have four years and we’ll advance a lot of things in that time.”

Members of the coalition have vowed to fight the decision by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana to back off previous commitments to push ahead with the compromise, according to a Times of Israel report.