With Shas Party also set to leave coalition, Haredi parties are blaming Likud MK Edelstein for destroying the gov’t

The ultra-Orthodox Shas Party is expected to join the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party and leave the government on Thursday, leaving the coalition with significantly fewer than the required 61 out of the 120 Knesset seats, and making new elections likely.

The party announced that “following the serious and unacceptable harm to the status of Torah scholars,” its spiritual guidance council, the “Council of Torah Sages,” is expected to discuss the issue on Wednesday.

The party is expected to declare its exit on Thursday, Israeli media reported.

The coalition crisis over the proposed new IDF draft law escalated on Monday, as UTJ quit the government after being presented with the latest draft bill, authored by Defense committee chairman and Likud MK, Yuli Edelstein.

Over the past months, Edelstein has been the main force in the coalition promoting a hard line on sanctions for Haredi draft dodgers, resisting intense pressure to compromise from the ultra-orthodox parties, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prime minister even offered to fire Edelstein to prevent the collapse of the coalition, a source confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Edelstein told reporters that the principles he laid out in the draft bill, which triggered the UTJ leaders’ exit on Monday, included some “on which compromise is not possible.”

These include “effective personal sanctions, institutional sanctions if targets are not met, applying high recruitment targets, which will increase rapidly,” and “effective oversight and enforcement mechanisms.”

Without these essential principles, “it would not be a conscription law, but a bluffing law,” he stressed.

“This is not the time to dismantle the right-wing government. The future of the state is not a political game, especially when the security challenges we face are more serious and existential than ever.”

The Haredi parties, meanwhile, blamed Edelstein for destroying the right-wing government coalition.

Shas party newspaper HaDerech decried “Likud and Edelstein’s blatant violation of agreements on the law regulating the status of yeshiva students.”

The two Haredi parties also released a joint statement, accusing Edelstein of “misleading the negotiating teams, the rabbis, the reserve personnel, the military and security officials, and everyone who has acted honestly to bring about a balanced and respectful settlement on the issue.”

“It is no coincidence that he refuses to reveal the text of the law he supposedly agreed to – because he knows that this will expose his series of violations and deceptions,” the statement added.

“Yuli Edelstein is playing a political game on the backs of those who serve, cynically exploiting the pain of families, causing a serious rift in the national camp, and toppling the right-wing government with his own hands.”

Edelstein responded with his own statement, reiterating his uncompromising stance: “No more schemes, no more bluffing – either a real conscription law or nothing.”

Even if the Shas Party quits the coalition, the government doesn’t collapse automatically. At the end of July, the Knesset goes into a three-month recess, granting Netanyahu ample time to navigate out of another crisis.

If no solution is found within that time, a law to disperse the Knesset will likely be legislated at the start of the winter session, triggering new elections no earlier than the start of 2026.