Draft differences dog coalition talks
The team tasked with building Israel’s next coalition government tried to pull a rabbit out of a hat this week, releasing a new proposal to draft Charedim to the army.
The exemption that Charedi men receive from national service has become the most contentious issue in coalition negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to form as large and broad a government as possible, but his potential partners are at loggerheads about the draft, meaning he looks likely to have to choose between them and make do with a smaller coalition.
Under the new proposal, if a significant number of students fail to enlist, yeshivahs would suffer budget cuts. But it is gentler on the Charedim than the plan of the second largest Knesset party, Yesh Atid.
While Yesh Atid wants universal service with the exception of just 400 exceptional yeshivah students, the proposal of Netanyahu’s Likud party would leave room for yeshivahs to keep more students back from service. It also addresses the fact that while Charedi leaders object to any draft, they particularly object to a draft at age 18, feeling that the late teens and early 20s are an important time for religious growth in yeshivah. The new plan allows for drafting up to the age of 26.
Charedi leaders have criticised the plan, as have some secular politicians. Yohanan Plesner, who headed a government attempt several months ago to formulate new legislation on Charedi service, told The AJN that he believes that the new plan will just “disguise” the continuation of the exemption.
Plesner, a former Kadima MK, said that he expects most students to defer service until 26 and then receive an exemption. He predicted that budget cuts to penalise yeshivahs will prove “meaningless” because they will be offset by extra money that Charedi parties will secure for the religious institutions in the Knesset.
“Based on this plan, nobody actually has to do anything,” Plesner complained.
Likud’s potential coalition partners have not yet responded to the draft plan, and uncertainty still hangs over the composition of the government. Naftali Bennett, leader of the religious-Zionist Jewish Home party and former chief of staff in Netanyahu’s office, met his former boss this week. There is a deep rift between the two, and in what seemed to be an expression of this Netanyahu kept him waiting for a meeting until he had met all other party leaders.
Sources said that the meeting was businesslike, but as of press time there is no sense of when Netanyahu will close deals with coalition partners. His ideal scenario is thought to be Yesh Atid and Shas as his main partners, but Yesh Atid and Jewish Home are understood to have reached an agreement to only enter the coalition as a pair.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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