A bill enjoying the support of Education Minister Gideon Saar has been pulled after Shas leader Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai signaled this was a deal breaker. The bill is intended to make it increasingly difficult for a frum female to receive a deferment from military service.

The bill stipulates that any female who has not learned a minimum of two years in a yeshiva would not be eligible for a draft deferment, a move that Yishai insists would target females returning to a path of keeping shabbos and mitzvos. This would also target religious girls attending traditional or public schools.

Yishai and party colleague Minister of Religious Service Yaakov Margi and Science Minister (HaBayit HaYehudi) Rabbi Dr. Daniel Friedman were reportedly fuming over the fact that the Likud’s education minister supports the bill.

The bill sponsored by MK (Kadima) Yisrael Hasson would compel females to sign an affidavit that they studied in a frum school for at least two of the three years preceding the date of the declaration. According to Hasson, statistics show that as many as 8% of the females seeking to avoid induction in the military based on being shomer shabbos are simply not telling the truth.

Apparently Saar not only supports the bill, but he busied himself in Knesset during the morning hours seeking to enlist support, infuriating the religious ministers, with Yishai threatening the prime minister that moving ahead with this bill will lead to a coalition crisis.

Ministers Yishai, Margi, Hershkowitz, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Justice Minister Prof. Yuval Neeman met and according to reports, it was not a calm event, with voices raised in high emotion. For now, the matter has been pushed off for a month as per Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)