The Sephardi-haredi Shas party’s spiritual leadership, the Council of Torah Sages, will convene on Wednesday in order to decide whether to join United Torah Judaism and resign from the government and coalition, the party said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
UTJ announced its final decision late Monday night, after last-minute negotiations over the wording of a bill proposal that would exempt over half of eligible haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men from IDF service fell through.
The negotiations were held in the Knesset on Monday between representatives of haredi parties, representatives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein.
Haredi MKs criticized Edelstein for allegedly reneging on the agreements reached by the two sides on June 12, a day before the launch of Operation Rising Lion against Iran. Edelstein announced he would hold a press conference at the Knesset, in which he will likely respond to the accusations.
The MKs from UTJ’s Lithuanian faction, Degel Hatorah, handed in their resignations late Monday night. These included Uri Maklev’s resignation as Deputy Transportation Minister, and the resignations of MKs Moshe Gafni, Yaakov Asher, and Yitzhak Pindrus from the chairmanships of the Knesset Finance Committee, Interior and Environmental Protection Committee, and State Affairs Committee, respectively.
On Tuesday, the minister and MKs from UTJ’s Hassidic faction, Agudat Yisrael, followed suit. Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Tradition Minister Meir Porush resigned his post, as did Deputy Culture and Sport Minister Yaakov Tessler and Welfare Committee chairman MK Yisrael Eichler. The party leader, Yitzhak Goldknopf, had already resigned his post as housing minister in June.
Shas’s council said that Wednesday's meeting comes in the wake of “the severe and unacceptable harm to the status of Torah students.”
Degel Hatorah's spiritual leaders speak out
Degel Hatorah’s two spiritual leaders, Rabbi Dov Lando and Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, wrote already on Sunday evening to the party’s MKs, “Since the governing authorities are showing intentions to increasingly restrict the lives of Torah learners in various ways, through attempts to demean and crush them — and repeatedly fail to uphold their commitments to legally regulate the status of yeshiva students and dear Torah scholars, the crown of creation and the secret of its existence — it is therefore my opinion that participation in the government and coalition should be immediately terminated, including resigning without delay from all related roles. May God deliver us swiftly.”
UTJ’s resignation left Netanyahu’s coalition with a slim majority of just 61 MKs; Shas’s departure would end Netanyahu’s majority in parliament. However, neither party has announced yet that it would support a measure to disperse the Knesset and head to an election.