Netanyahu Faces Coalition Turmoil After Halting Rabbis Bill Vote
Shas party leader Aryeh Deri has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of losing control over his government after the sudden cancellation of a vote on the contentious “Rabbis Bill,” which was scheduled for today. Israel’s Channel 12 reported a leaked conversation between Deri and Netanyahu, in which Deri questioned how he could explain the situation to Shas’ voter base and rabbis. “Do you think it’s reasonable for me to tell them that the prime minister has lost control?” Deri asked.
Critics argue that the bill, which would cost taxpayers tens of millions of shekels annually to pay for hundreds of new neighborhood rabbis, was designed to benefit Shas by creating jobs for its members. According to the public broadcaster Kan, Netanyahu did not inform Deri beforehand about the decision to withdraw the legislation from the agenda.
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Officials from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party have warned that the government is on the brink of collapse following Netanyahu’s last-minute decision to pull the “Rabbis Bill” from the Knesset agenda. An unnamed Shas official told Kan, “There is no coalition, there is no discipline, and the most frustrating thing is that the Likud is a party made up of 35 separate factions. Everyone does as they please,” citing a verse from the biblical Book of Judges. “The complete dissolution of the coalition is only a matter of time,” the official added.
Channel 12 also reported that Deri threatened to topple the government if the bill, which seeks to change the process for selecting municipal rabbis, was not put to a vote. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid remarked that Netanyahu was starting to face dissent within his own Likud party. “The next test will be the conscription law,” Lapid stated, referring to a bill to lower the age at which yeshiva students are exempted from military service. “What is more important, political survival or the survival of the troops?”
The vote was pulled after coalition whip Ofir Katz unilaterally replaced two Likud members on the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee who had stalled the bill’s progress.
