Yisrael Beytenu member rejects any compromise on Haredi draft law, implies he may leave party

A lawmaker who recently left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and joined the secularist opposition party Yisrael Beytenu comes out publicly against his new party leader, Avigdor Liberman, for expressing openness to compromise on ultra-Orthodox enlistment, suggesting he may leave the party over the issue.

Dan Illouz, who left Likud due to the advancement of a Haredi-demanded law formalizing sweeping exemptions from military service for most ultra-Orthodox men, says the issue cannot be compromised on, stressing that “this was an explicit promise we gave voters before the election.”

Illouz is No. 10 on Yisrael Beytenu’s slate. The party got 7 seats in last week’s election, meaning he anyway won’t be part of the next Knesset unless three party MKs resign. (Some could do so under the “Norwegian Law” that lets new ministers resign as lawmakers and later return to the Knesset if they cease being a minister.)

Illouz says that he fought against the outgoing coalition’s exemption law efforts, and vows to fight it also “if it comes from the other side [of the aisle], even as a regular citizen” — a remark that could be interpreted as floating the possibility of leaving Yisrael Beytenu.

Rather than a coalition with Haredi parties, he throws his support behind a cross-bloc Zionist unity government, which would require Netanyahu’s Likud to join.