Posted on 05/05/23
| News Source: JPost
Tension in the coalition between the haredi parties and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued on Thursday after United Torah Judaism’s Jerusalem and Tradition Minister Meir Porush criticized him earlier this week over his inability to fulfill promises laid out in the coalition agreements between UTJ and the Likud.
In an interview in the Mishpacha newspaper, associated with the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction in UTJ, party chairman and Housing Minister Yizhak Goldkopf said that Netanyahu had received “unequivocal information” that the faction’s spiritual leadership council of rabbis ruled that if a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription law does not pass by the time the budget passes on May 29, Agudat Yisrael will leave the government.
According to the coalition agreements between the Likud and UTJ, the issue of haredi conscription needed to be resolved by the time the budget passed. The current bill is set to expire on July 31. Two haredi factions – Shas and the Lithuanian Degel Hatorah (which makes up the second half of United Torah Judaism) – concurred that it was not realistic to pass such a bill by May 29, but Agudat Yisrael has not yet given up this demand.
Shas also criticized the government on Thursday, after publicly refraining from doing so until now. In an article in the party-affiliated newspaper Haderech, Shas spokesperson and secretary Asher Medina criticized the government for not acting immediately to go through with the “Deri Law,” which would enable party chairman Arye Deri to return to his former positions as Health and Interior Minister.
Netanyahu removed Deri after the High Court of Justice ruled in January that the appointment was “extremely unreasonable,” due both to his criminal history and to his misleading the court in his last conviction in January 2022, when he said he would not return to politics and received a lenient plea bargain.