Top coalition officials meet Haredi representatives in last-ditch attempt to reach compromise

After Knesset opposition parties announce that they will place a bill to dissolve the Knesset on today’s agenda, senior coalition officials meet with Haredi representatives in a last-ditch effort at finding a compromise draft of an enlistment bill that all sides can support.

According to Hebrew media reports, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs and coalition whip Ofir Katz are currently meeting with the ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset in the hope of preventing them from voting in favor of legislation to dissolve the Knesset. Also present at the meeting is Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline coalition currently holding 68 out of the 120 parliamentary seats, both Shas and United Torah Judaism would need to back the legislation.

The two parties have publicly said that they will vote to dissolve the Knesset in the bill’s preliminary reading due to the coalition’s failure to pass legislation exempting yeshiva students from military service.

However, Shas is working hard behind the scenes to postpone the vote and prevent the fall of the government. The legislation, if advanced today, would require three more plenum votes to take effect.

In a statement to online Haredi news channel Pargod, chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf says that in line with his party’s rabbinic leadership’s instructions, United Torah Judaism will vote in favor of dissolution.

“They say that we need to vote to dissolve the Knesset so we will vote. There is no doubt,” he states.

According to HaDerech, Shas’s official newspaper, the party’s ruling Council of Torah Sages will decide on a course of action today.