Shas chairman Aryeh Deri has resigned from the party's Knesset list and will not serve as a member of the 26th Knesset, the movement announced.
Two other Shas MKs, Moshe Abutbul and Dror Amos, have also resigned from the list. They will be replaced by Uriel Busso and Yossi Tayeb, both chareidi members who were next in line on the Shas roster.
The decision follows a week of uncertainty over Deri's position after Shas fell to six mandates in the recent election. Last Wednesday, members of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah spoke with Deri by phone and decided that he would remain in his role as party chairman. The new arrangement allows him to continue leading Shas without holding a Knesset seat.
On Thursday, Deri broke a long silence and addressed the election results publicly for the first time since the vote. Speaking at a special faction meeting held at Shas headquarters in Yerushalayim, attended by MKs and party representatives from across the country, he spoke about what he described as a campaign of pressure and incitement against the movement.
The gathering opened with an emotional recitation of Mizmor LeTodah by all the faction members and representatives present, expressing gratitude for the internal unity of the party and for the public's loyalty to the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah.
"We are obligated to thank Hashem for the bad and for the good, even when we do not understand His calculations," Deri began. "Baruch Hashem, 300,000 people said yes to the call of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah and were not tempted by the insane incitement campaign against us over the past three years, from within and from without."
Deri described the intensity of the battle the movement faced in recent years and called the election result a "revealed miracle." "I have been in these campaigns for decades; there has never been anything like this. In wartime, they exploited the quiet and responsibility we showed in order to attack the movement and its leaders. They even tried to split our spiritual leadership. Experts told me they did not believe it was possible to survive such a campaign. It is truly a miracle, and for that we must thank Hashem."
The Shas chairman emphasized what he called the achievement of preserving party ranks and unity, which he said is not taken for granted in the turbulent political landscape. "Not only did we survive, but we preserved something that almost no other party has: one spiritual leadership, one political leadership, one faction in the Knesset, and all our representatives in local authorities united. This is not self-evident. For all of this we said Mizmor LeTodah."
