The newspaper explained that despite the ongoing talks between the Haredi blocs and the coalition administration to ease the boycott and voting and allow the passage of some proposals in the preliminary readings in the Knesset, the “Shas” and “Degel HaTorah” blocs confirmed that this agreement does not include approving the budget, stressing the need to ratify the “Bismuth Law” regarding exemption from military service in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in exchange for supporting the budget.
The Haredi blocs had expressed their willingness last week to end the boycott, but the opposition of members of the Likud and “Religious Zionism” to the exemption plan reignited the crisis, amid the Haredim’s insistence on exerting pressure on the coalition to pass this law, which exempts tens of thousands of young Haredim from military service.
The ynet website quoted a source in “Degel HaTorah” as saying: “We have no agreement with individual Knesset members… The agreement is with Netanyahu himself. Let him please bring his bloc to resolve the matter.”
In contrast, the opposition is intensifying within “Agudat Yisrael,” the Hasidic wing of “United Torah Judaism,” where MK Meir Porush attacked the law, describing it as “should be torn up.” MK Yisrael Eichler also recorded his objection to ending the boycott, leaving a note stating: “There is no justification for returning to vote with the coalition as long as students of religious seminaries are being persecuted.”
During a Shas bloc meeting, its leader Aryeh Deri announced that the party would not support the budget in protest against “excluding Haredi children from the food voucher project,” considering this amendment an “unjustified persecution of the weakest families.”
In a political context, Likud spokesman Guy Levy confirmed in a radio interview that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “certainly wants” to pass the Bismuth plan, noting that there is intensive government work to accelerate the legislative process.
On another level, the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee approved Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s request to extend the service of reserve soldiers until the beginning of next January, allowing the call-up of up to 280,000 soldiers. This decision was passed by a majority of 8 votes to 7.
However, the opposition within the committee strongly criticized this measure, considering that it was taken “in minutes” despite its direct impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families, and added: “The government is severing its connection with reality… legislating evasion of conscription over the heads of the fighters, and exploiting them.”
