PM Netanyahu convinces MK to rejoin coalition, cracking ultra-Orthodox legislation boycott & paving way for IDF draft law

In a surprising move, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to split the ultra-Orthodox parties and convince one of their Knesset Members to rejoin the governing coalition on Thursday. 

The prime minister’s shrewd move could pave the way for the approval of the controversial IDF Draft Law, ending the ultra-Orthodox legislation boycott and averting the looming threat of new elections. 

On Thursday, Netanyahu appointed Knesset Member Israel Eichler of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) Party to the largely meaningless, but comfortable and well-paid position of Deputy Communications Minister. 

Israel’s so-called Norwegian Law enables ministers to resign as Knesset Members. Due to intra-party politics, the UTJ candidate who will fill Eichler's place is MK Yitzhak Pindrus, who is reportedly willing to vote for the coalition’s latest proposal for a new IDF Draft Law, despite general ultra-Orthodox opposition. 

Pindrus is also expected to rejoin the coalition, which UTJ quit amid the row over the draft law last July, according to Channel 12 News.

The move highlights a growing rift between the rabbis of Ger and Belz, two of the senior spiritual leaders of the party, and could point to a weakening of the unified front the Haredi leadership has put up against the draft law bill. 

A failure of the draft bill is widely expected to trigger early new elections, while the next regular elections are scheduled for October.

Only part of the Agudat Yisrael faction of UTJ, led by former housing minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, rejects the draft law proposal outright. Other senior rabbis of the faction, the Degel HaTorah faction, to which Pindrus belongs, as well as the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, are more flexible, demanding that changes be made before granting their support. 

As part of their tactic to force improvements, the Haredi parties have used their Knesset votes to boycott most legislation for several months at this point. 

UTJ has seven votes, three belonging to Agudat Yisrael and four to Degel HaTorah. After the party left the coalition, it now only holds 60 of the 120 Knesset seats, enabling UTJ to block legislation from reaching a majority. 

Last week, a meeting of the senior Haredi rabbis reached no binding decision for or against the current draft proposal, despite most rabbis opposing the proposed sanctions for draft dodgers, a senior UTJ figure told Channel 12 News. 

According to Kan News, other rabbis are currently working on a new framework to win over the rabbis of the Agudat Yisrael faction. The new proposal would not include enlistment quotas but enable verifiable Yeshiva students to avoid the draft while those Haredi men who don’t study, and still dodge the draft, would face severe sanctions. 

The coalition plans to wrap up discussions about the draft bill in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by the end of the month, and to bring the law to a vote at the start of February, according to Ynet News.  

According to Channel 12 News’s senior political analyst, Amit Segal, “Shas and the Degel HaTorah [faction of UTJ] want to pass this at the start of February, to put it behind them.” 

“Their estimate, and also in the Likud Party... is that ‘it’s better to pass it in one go, than to bleed votes every day during the discussions about it. Absurdly, once the vote passes, the media discussions will decrease.'” 

Meanwhile, opposition leaders criticized the overtly political decision to appoint Eichler, who identifies with the anti-Zionist stream of the Haredi community, to a deputy minister post. 

“Netanyahu is promoting evasion from IDF service together with Knesset members who do not believe in the existence of the State of Israel,” criticized Yesh Atid chairman, Yair Lapid. 

“The appointment of Eichler as deputy minister – someone who has previously said that Israel is an ‘enemy state,’ a historic national disaster, and that it is a ‘Hebrew ghetto’ – solely in order to try to pass the draft-evasion law, is a disgrace that cannot be erased.” 

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman charged that “Government ministries are not gifts or bribes – there is actually a country to run.”