UTJ party to boycott votes on coalition bills this week amid feud with fellow Haredi party

By Sam Sokol 29 December 2025, 5:23 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

United Torah Judaism party head Yitzhak Goldknopf at a meeting at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on June 9, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party has decided to boycott votes on coalition legislation this week as part of an ongoing feud with fellow Haredi party Shas, ultra-Orthodox media reports.

According to the Behadrei Haredim website, the decision comes at the request of UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction, which is involved in a conflict with Shas over the appointment of a new chairman of Jerusalem’s religious council. The conflict has escalated to the point where Degel HaTorah last week abstained from voting for additional funding for the Religious Services Ministry, a key Shas interest.

During UTJ’s faction meeting this afternoon, party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, who belongs to the party’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction, attacked his fellow MKs for launching a boycott over the Jerusalem religious council and not over the recent arrests of yeshiva students who dodged the military draft.

This boycott marks an escalation from the partial legislation boycott the party has maintained for months, in which it has declined to vote on preliminary readings of private bills advanced by coalition lawmakers.

Both Shas and UTJ left the government over the summer to protest the lack of progress in exempting yeshiva students from military service. However, unlike UTJ, Shas remained a member of the coalition.