Shas party chairman Aryeh Deri is reportedly furious that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to scrap a controversial bill pushed by Deri due to opposition from within the ruling coalition, bringing to an end a political saga that began on Sunday.
The announcement that the bill would be removed from the Knesset agenda came at approximately 1 a.m. Wednesday. The decision was made after the prime minister consulted with coalition floor whip Ofir Katz (Likud). The decision was likely the result of both pressure from Likud mayors who opposed the bill and the fact that two Likud members and one from Otzma Yehudit refused to support the bill, which did not guarantee a majority in the Knesset constitutional committee to move it forward.
According to Israel Hayom, Deri was furious with Netanyahu, accusing him of failing to enforce discipline within his party in a phone call late on Tuesday night. Senior coalition officials have been quoted in various reports as saying this is a real political crisis that could destabilize the coalition government.
The bill would give Israel’s Chief Rabbi and the Ministry of Religious Affairs the power to appoint government-salaried rabbis in municipalities and districts, replacing the current system in which cities have the power to appoint their own rabbis. The bill is widely seen as an attempt by the Orthodox parties in the ruling coalition, particularly the Haredi Shas party, to appoint their own members as rabbis and exert influence over state religious affairs even in secular areas.
Criticism of the bill came from all sides.
Criticism of the bill by both the opposition and the coalition has focused on two points: first, the fact that it is politically motivated and designed to give high-paying jobs to political allies, and second, that it takes away from mayors and local government leaders the power to appoint rabbis appropriate to the particular circumstances of their cities and regions and gives it to the central government.
A Shas party source said Tuesday that the party’s chairman, Rep. Aryeh Deri, is determined to pass the bill because it is important to him and as a statement to the coalition that Likud must maintain coalition discipline or the government will be dissolved.
The decision to kill the bill came following a series of political moves and accusations between Likud, Shas and Otzma Yehudit.
The coalition holds a 9-7 majority in the Knesset Constitutional Committee, where the bill is scheduled to be voted on. But two Likud lawmakers, Tally Gotliv and Moshe Saada, announced earlier this week that they would vote against the bill, eliminating the coalition’s majority. On Tuesday, Katz removed Gotliv and Saada from the committee and replaced them with two other Likud lawmakers who were expected to vote in favor. But the only member of the Otzma Yehudit party on the committee, Rep. Yisak Kreuzer, also said he would vote against the bill, leaving the vote tied 8-8 and the bill rejected.
Otzma Yehudit accused Likud and Shas on Tuesday of making a deal with the committee’s two Arab party representatives, Ofer Kashif of Hadash Tal and Mansour Abbas of Ra’am, to pass the bill by abstaining from the vote. Shas denied the allegations, and the two coalition parties traded public accusations Tuesday evening.
