Report: UTJ in daily contact with Eisenkot bloc, Shas fears draft-law deal won’t hold

United Torah Judaism and Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc are in daily contact and making significant progress in coalition-building negotiations, a senior UTJ figure tells Channel 12, while Shas fears UTJ could help form a government without securing guarantees that a deal on ultra-Orthodox military service will be honored.

“Contacts are taking place beneath the surface on a daily basis. There is real progress in the talks, much more than it appears from the outside,” the UTJ official involved in the talks says.

Meetings between UTJ chairman Yaakov Asher and Eisenkot, and another between Asher and Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, have also recently been reported.

Shas’s main concern, the network reports, is that UTJ could enable an Eisenkot-led government to form through its abstention or support, but then be unable to ensure the bloc honors an agreement on the Haredi draft law.

In closed-door discussions, Shas chairman Aryeh Deri reportedly said UTJ has no guarantees that the legislation will pass.

“The Knesset’s legal adviser has already said that the draft law cannot be passed before a government is sworn in,” he is quoted as saying. “It’s a dangerous step to establish a government with the Haredi voices, only for us to ultimately be thrown out without the status of yeshiva students being settled.”

He stressed that Shas will not negotiate with Eisenkot’s bloc, citing a ruling by the party’s Council of Torah Sages: “We are going with Netanyahu, and that’s what will happen.”