Shas said pressuring UTJ to delay support for Knesset dissolution vote; Haredi parties lift voting boycott to buy time

In an attempt to buy time during talks with coalition leaders over a possible compromise on Haredi enlistment, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism party lift their partial legislative boycott, the Ynet news site reports.

The boycott has led to the removal of private members bills sponsored by coalition lawmakers from the Knesset agenda for the last several weeks.

However, the boycott has now been paused in order to allow Haredi lawmakers to vote for coalition bills. In order to give itself time to negotiate a solution with the Haredim, the coalition packed today’s Knesset agenda with numerous bills, likely delaying a potential preliminary vote on dissolving the Knesset until this evening.

According to Ynet, Shas is currently placing pressure on UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction to withdraw its support for measures to dissolve the Knesset for another week in order to provide Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with more time to broker an agreement. The  news site also reports that Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein is being kept out of the ongoing talks until the evening.

While the ultra-Orthodox parties are still negotiating, they are ready to go ahead with the vote to dissolve the Knesset, United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Roth tells The Times of Israel.

“There’s nobody excited about this. It’s a last resort but we have no choice,” he states.

Roth, who belongs to UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction, says that he has no knowledge of any contacts between Shas and Degel HaTorah.

The Kikar Hashabbat news site quotes senior Shas and Degel HaTorah officials as saying that “if there is no breakthrough, we will vote in favor of dissolving the Knesset, but we must remember that the goal is not elections but the regulation of the status of yeshiva students. We will do everything to regulate their status.”

According to the site, Rabbi Dov Lando, the chairman of Degel HaTorah’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, has indicated that he will not agree to a compromise unless a revised bill is approved by the Knesset and Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s legal advisers and contains “an orderly and agreed-upon timetable for the enactment of the law.”

If the legislation to dissolve the Knesset passes its preliminary vote today, it would still need to pass three further votes to take effect. If it fails, opposition parties have to wait six months to bring another Knesset dissolution bill to a vote.