With exactly one week until Israelis go to the polls, the chareidi parties are already preparing for the day after. A senior United Torah Judaism official revealed Tuesday evening in conversation with Kikar Hashabbat that an understanding has been reached with Netanyahu: if he forms the next government, the draft law will be legislated as the very first bill, before any other legislation.
"There is an agreement with Netanyahu, if he gets 61, the draft law will be the first law his government passes," the official said. "The first! And there will be no compromises like we made on the eve of Iran."
According to the source, "What was will not be again, we will not agree to delays, and Netanyahu understands this. That is why he himself conveyed a similar message to our community through the chareidi media."
The chareidi MKs have made the issue a condition for joining any coalition. Shas chairman Aryeh Deri zt"l, in an interview he gave to Kikar Hashabbat last week, laid down the condition as an unequivocal red line for any future government formation: legislating the status of yeshiva students into law.
The Shas chairman emphasized that as long as the "sword of arrests" hangs over bnei Torah, his party will not lend its hand to establishing any government, whether in outside support or active participation. "We are continuing in the path of Maran," he said. "Maran told us to do everything, but everything, to regulate the status of yeshiva students, so that the principle would be that anyone learning Torah continues."
"We declared this, the Rishon Letzion said it aloud, I said it: there will be no government in Israel, that Shas supports or participates in, without us regulating the status of yeshiva students."
