According to “senior coalition officials” quoted anonymously in the daily Maariv, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is looking for the way to dump Yesh Atid and its leader, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, to replace the ultra-secular party with the chareidim, Shas and Yahadut Hatorah. The mainstream media reports that tensions are evident as the prime minister is not accustomed to the harsh mannerisms of his finance minister, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. Lapid is not reserved when it comes to showing and flexing his coalition might and defying the prime minister.
Maariv in its Thursday, 16 Teves 5774 edition quotes coalition officials saying “the coalition is simply not functioning. Mr. Netanyahu has two options, to bring in Labor headed by Yitzchak Herzog or the chareidim”. They continue explaining that Labor is not too likely to agree to enter into a coalition with the right-wing Bayit Yehudi party, while for the chareidim it is not a non-starter. For newly-elected Labor party leader Yitzchak Herzog, entering into a coalition with Bayit Yehudi is not an option for he remains a strong supporter of ongoing negotiations between Israel and the PA (Palestinian Authority).
While one can never know when it comes to the chareidi parties, Shas officials are signaling it is highly unlikely they will enter the coalition, reminding us how Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef ZT”L lamented over his last meeting with the prime minister and how the late posek hador cried over ongoing efforts to draft bnei yeshivos.
The Ashkenazi chareidim, Yahadut Hatorah are signaling that they too cannot envision such a situation as they continue referring to the Netanyahu-led administration as being responsible for the “gezeiros shmad”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
Who will dump whom first? Netanyahu is all talk and threats while Lapid is a sly fox. By the time Netanyahu will chuck Lapid out, Lapid whose goal from the start was to become Prime Minister will have overthrown Netanyahu.
Non of this fight is real, its a game that the “New World Order” regime, want them to play, to confuse the public.
Bayit Yehudi is also getting uncomortable with Yesh Atid BUT there is strong support in both Bayit Yehudi and Likud for conscription of yeshiva students, and that is also the primary issue for the hareidi parties. However due to the importance of preventing conscription, the hareidi parties will be less demanding on other issues such as economics (and remember that the hareidim are left-wing welfare state advocates, as opposed to the conservatives of Likud, Bayit Yehudi and Yesh Atid).
A probable compromise might be to limit government subsidies of yeshivos to grants based on the students having served in the IDF, and offering hesder-type programs to the hareidi yeshivos. This means the anti-zionists, who are making the loudest protests, would be content (they don’t get drafted and never accepted subsidies), while Shas and Yahadut ha-Torah would enter the government, albeit with much less patronage than in the past (which in turn satisfies the Likud and Bayit Yehudi opponents of the hareidim who object as much to subsidies as to draft exemptions).
#1 Actually, if you look at the polls, it is Netanyahu that set up Lapid. He has lost a lot of support. Polls show that if an election were held today, Lapid would lose 7 seats (of 19. He’s not such a sly fox after-all.
His support will probably continue to erode if he stays in the government. People like him do better on the outside, in the opposition, where they can rant and rave and rile up the masses. They just have a problem governing, since they don’t live in the real world.