by Eliav Breuer
The coalition’s ultra-Orthodox parties have threatened to support the bill due to Netanyahu’s prolonged failure to push through a law to regulate haredi service in the IDF.
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Wednesday is set to be a dramatic day in Israeli politics, due to a scheduled preliminary vote on a bill to disperse the Knesset, which would automatically lead to an election.
The bill represents the most serious threat to the government’s stability since it took office in late 2022. The coalition’s ultra-Orthodox parties have threatened to support the bill due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prolonged failure to push through a law to regulate haredi service in the IDF.
The Knesset has three haredi factions – Shas, Agudat Yisrael, and Degel Hatorah- which represent Sephardic, Hassidic, and Lithuanian haredi voters. Since the 1990s, Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah have run on a shared list called United Torah Judaism, but each faction operates independently and answers to separate rabbinical authorities. Shas has its own rabbinical council as well.
True to Tuesday evening, both Degel Hatorah and Agudat Yisrael were committed to supporting the bill, but Shas had yet to make a final decision, and its rabbinical council had yet to convene to decide on the matter, as negotiations over the language of a new haredi draft bill continued behind the scenes. With Shas, the coalition would still have a majority of 61 MKs, which would be enough to strike down the bill.
In an attempt to buy more time, the coalition on Monday heaped dozens of bills onto Wednesday’s agenda, and is reportedly planning on using all the time at its disposal to present each bill. The plenum commences at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesday, and Argentinian President Javier Milei is scheduled to give a special address at 7:00 p.m., giving the coalition approximately eight hours to attempt to delay the vote and enable negotiations to continue.
Huckabee denies attempt to convince haredi leaders
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee denied on Tuesday a report that he had attempted to convince haredi leaders to back down from their threat to topple the government, due to the precarious military situation.According to the report by Channel 13 on Monday evening, Huckabee had spoken to political and spiritual haredi leaders, including leading Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch and Jerusalem and Tradition Minister Meir Porush, and argued that if the government fell, the US would “find it difficult” to back Israel if it chose to move against Iran.
Huckabee did not deny the report at first, stating in response to a query on Tuesday morning, “The Ambassador meets with a wide range of Israeli society. The contents of his meetings are private.”
However, on Tuesday afternoon, Huckabee wrote on X that “there has been no attempt to influence Haredi Knesset members regarding a decision to dissolve the government.” Huckabee added, “I have repeatedly said in private conversations that it is not the role of the United States, nor of its Ambassador, to try and choose the government of Israel. Rather, it is my job to work with the government that the people of Israel decide.”
Even if the bill to disperse the Knesset passes its preliminary reading on Wednesday, it could still take weeks to pass through the legislative process, which includes passing three votes in the Knesset plenum, interspersed with two votes in the Knesset Home Committee.
A law that is struck down in a preliminary vote may not be proposed again for six months, and the opposition will thus monitor the situation on Wednesday and remove the bill from the agenda if it is not sure it has the necessary votes.
The legal team of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC), chaired by MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud), has been working on formulating the text of a new bill, which will reach the committee in the coming weeks.
However, this may not leave enough time for the bill proposal to pass into law by the end of the Knesset summer session in late July, in which case the current situation, which requires that all eligible haredi men serve in the IDF, will continue to apply as is at least until October. In any case, if the Knesset disperses, the bill cannot proceed.
The bill proposal will likely include draft quotas from the haredi sector that will increase annually, eventually reaching 50% of each graduating class, as well as sanctions on individuals who ignore draft orders.
Despite the fact that the previous legal exemption expired in June 2024, a vast majority of the approximately 24,000 draft orders to haredi men since then have been ignored. The IDF has already stated that it will not meet the goal it committed to in the High Court, of 4,800 haredi draftees in the 2024-2025 draft year, which will end on June 30.
Supporters have argued that the bill will lead to an immediate increase in the number of draftees and bring thousands more haredim into the army.
Critics, however, have countered that there is no guarantee that even with new sanctions, those who receive orders with the new law in place will actually respect them; and that there is no legal justification to enable 50% of haredim to continue being exempt from service, while secular and religious-Zionist Israelis do not enjoy the same privilege.
Closed-door negotiations continue
In the meantime, closed-door negotiations continued in recent days between Edelstein, former Shas minister Ariel Atias, and Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs. The negotiations have focused on two central issues: what the package of sanctions will include, and whether or not the sanctions will apply immediately or after a “grace period.”Potential sanctions against draft dodgers include preventing them from leaving the country, barring them from receiving state housing discounts, removing daycare subsidies, preventing them from receiving driver’s licenses, blocking state discounts on academic studies, and more.
The influx of new haredi draftees would significantly lower the burden on reserve soldiers, and reservist groups have applied pressure on Edelstein to ensure that a bill passes that will lead to a real increase, and not serve as another fig leaf for haredi exemptions.
Eliav Breuer
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-857252
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