As the political battle over the draft law intensifies and the legal pressure on the Torah world mounts, Kikar HaShabbat analyst Yishai Cohen offered a revealing look at the quiet contacts taking place between senior figures in the change bloc and the chareidi parties. He spoke on the "Davar Rishon" program hosted by Moshe Manes.
Cohen began by pointing to a striking change in language. The term "draft-dodging law," a fixture of the change bloc's campaign rhetoric, has quietly disappeared. In its place, he noted, politicians and commentators now speak of an "arrangement law" and of reaching understandings. Some of the same voices that spoke harshly about the chareidi public only months ago are now saying the army does not need every chareidi young man. Even Avigdor Liberman, who for years ruled out sitting with chareidi representatives, now appears to have left the door open, drawing his red line only at the Arab parties.
In Cohen's view, the shift says less about a newfound concern for sharing the burden, an issue that genuinely weighs on reservists, than about a single political goal. "It's about one political desire only: to bring down Binyamin Netanyahu," he said.
Behind the scenes, Cohen reported, talks are already well underway between senior figures in Gadi Eisenkot's camp and senior members of United Torah Judaism. The framework under discussion would see UTJ abstain to allow a change government to be formed. In return, the party would receive an agreed draft law and ongoing cooperation. Its central condition would be full preservation of the status quo on matters of religion and state, along with the status quo on political and security issues.
Cohen argued that the chareidi parties should take the opportunity seriously. "The public's representatives in the Knesset received one central mandate: to regulate the status of yeshiva students," he said. The attempt to secure that status under a fully right-wing government failed, he noted, and repeated promises from Netanyahu went unfulfilled, leaving bnei yeshivah branded as deserters and facing arrest through no choice of their own.
"Netanyahu is a means, not an end," Cohen said. "If there is an option to regulate the status of yeshiva students and save them from sanctions and arrests within a change government, the chareidim must do it."
He added that Shas now has far more freedom of movement with regard to Netanyahu. The election results showed that periphery voters who wanted to back Netanyahu largely moved to Likud and Otzma Yehudit. Shas, he said, has returned to being a classic chareidi party devoted entirely to the needs of the Torah world.
Cohen also recalled what gedolei Yisrael said before the election. Rav Dov Lando ruled that "there is no longer a Netanyahu bloc, we are a bloc of the Torah world." Rav Yitzchak Yosef shlita said that matters could look different with regard to the left and Eisenkot.
As for Eisenkot's own proposal, which would grant exemptions to some 4,500 yeshiva students each year and direct others to civilian, national or rescue service, Cohen called it a reasonable basis for negotiation that could be developed into an agreed law protecting all those who learn Torah.
Even if the effort collapses at the last moment because of Liberman, Cohen said, the chareidi parties would still come away with a significant gain. A signed memorandum of understanding with the change bloc would give them a powerful bargaining chip in any future negotiations with a right-wing government.
