Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seemingly go to great extremes to keep his ragtag coalition together, even by weakening the security capabilities of the country he leads.
Here’s why. If Israel’s annual state budget is not approved by the end of March at the close of the fiscal year, the Knesset will automatically dissolve, and elections will be called. Coalition partner Shas has warned it will not vote in favor of the budget unless the highly controversial haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft law introduced by Likud’s Boaz Bismuth is passed into law.
The IDF has warned of a workforce shortage and has urgently called for more combat recruits after more than two years of war. Legislation to enforce conscription has been widely considered vital to the country’s security.
Critics of the current draft bill, and we are among them, argue that Bismuth’s outline, which has replaced a more forceful one by his predecessor, then-Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee head Yuli Edelstein, fails to enforce haredi conscription, serving primarily as a political measure to appease haredi parties instead.
However, Netanyahu is so intent on the bill passing, as this will likely lead to the passage of the budget and ensure that his coalition will stay alive on life support, that he’s pulling out his cards from his sleeve.
He’s offered Yisrael Eichler from the haredi Agudat Yisrael faction of United Torah Judaism a previously nonexistent position of deputy communications minister, at a cost to taxpayers (of which Eichler’s constituency is not among) of NIS 3.5 million.
Agudat Yisrael and another UTJ faction, Degel Hatorah, resigned from the government and the coalition in July after the fallout in negotiations over Edelstein’s version of the controversial conscription bill.
Creating the new post and giving it to Eichler will bolster Netanyahu’s chances of passing the budget because it will enable Yitzhak Pindrus, from Degel Hatorah, to also return to the Knesset, taking Eichler’s place as an MK.
Pindrus was one of three UTJ MKs who left the Knesset in July in opposition to Edelstein’s draft bill. That created an imbalance in the number of MKs from Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah. Pindrus’ return will restore balance between the two factions.
But more importantly for Netanyahu, the end result would be Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah voting for the “draft evasion bill,” as detractors call it, and the subsequent passage of the state budget. Coalition saved, but at what cost?
As opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) astutely put it, “Netanyahu is promoting draft evasion from the IDF together with Knesset members who do not believe in the existence of the State of Israel.”
“The appointment of Eichler as a deputy minister, someone who has previously said that Israel is an ‘enemy state,’ that it is 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,” he continued.
Over the course of the last two years, Israelis who do serve in the IDF have borne the brunt of responsibility, with many serving upward of 400 days of reserve duty. The legislation, which will save the coalition, is a slap in their faces.
On Thursday, Lapid, former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, and Edelstein were among those joining a protest in Jerusalem calling for national conscription.
“The people marching here with me have done more than 400 days of reserve duty, and in the Knesset, they are organizing draft evasion. We will not allow this to pass,” Lapid said.
Eisenkot added that the protesters represented “the most diverse group of people from all parts of Israeli society.”
“I hope that the Knesset receives the message to promote a draft law and not a [draft] evasion law,” he said.
The presence of the Likud’s Edelstein, who was ousted from his position as chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in July, when he wouldn’t buckle under to the haredim and to Netanyahu, was especially telling.
It is not an extreme left-wing coalition of “Kaplanists,” as the Right has coined them, that are up in arms over the draft law and the reintroduction of the haredi parties into the government. It is the cross-section of clear-thinking, middle-of-the-road, and even right-wing Israelis who realize that playing politics with the country’s security is wrong and dangerous.