Bibi’s new coalition will undo religious reforms

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida –Pundits, columnists and political science professors have commented on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new 61 to 59 new coalition government and have wondered how long it can last. If some member goes abroad or gets sick, the government can fall.

Whether the government lasts for a few months or a few years, it is now the law of the land. This column will analyze how it differs from the previous Netanyahu government organized in 2013.

It is totally and completely different.  In 2013, two new parties, one headed by Naftali Bennett, which was a combination of West Bank settlers and modern Orthodox politicians, and the second, headed by Yair Lapid, the hero of the middle class, ganged up on Netanyahu to force him to exclude the religious parties and their demands on the treasury from his coalition.

The two parties which were totally different in their composition and goals were united by one popular slogan.  They would end the automatic draft exemption of Haredi and other Orthodox youth which had ballooned into thousands of young men exempt from the draft. This had become a national scandal.

Netanyahu begged the two parties to allow him to include the ultra orthodox Shas party which had been part of every government, both those headed by Labor and by Likud.  Shas which stands for Shomer Sefarad, is opposed to the status quo on the West Bank.  As long as their schools are funded by the state, they will go along with their government’s lip service to two states for two peoples.

The two parties insisted that the religious parties be eliminated.  Now they are back in the tiniest and most vulnerable coalition majority of 61 seats with 59 seats in the opposition.  The Knesset passed a law with a quota for Orthodox and ultra Orthodox draftees.  This quota has never been met.

While Shas represents the Mizrahi and Sephardic population, a second religious party, United Torah Judaism represents the Haredi and Ashkenadic ultra-Orthodox.

Netanyahu’s new government gives cabinet posts to Shas and United Torah Judaism.

There is a quirk which is causing trouble. One of the constituents of United Torah Judaism is the Agudat Israel, which is traditionally anti-state. They get around that tradition by accepting deputy ministerial positions, so that they can say that they are not part of the state government.

An Agudat Israel rabbi has been appointed deputy minister of health with no minister above him. So Yair Lapid has threatened to take this matter to the high court of justice, stating that the people’s health needs a full minister with experience in health affairs.

Most importantly, Bibi’s contract with United Torah Judaism with its 6 seats contains no less than 87 clauses which cancel or make meaningless most of the reforms which the Knesset has passed.   Among the 87 clauses are the following:

* Restoration of the billions of shekels paid to Haredi schools that do not follow the state curriculum in math and science.

* Restoration of the family subsidies paid for each child paid to large Haredi families of 10 or 12 kids.  This cancels the limitation of no money after the 6th kid.  This will cost 3 billion shekels a year.

* Cancellation of the threat of criminal prosecution of ultra Orthodox youth who did not obey the draft.

Many of the clauses deal with the conversion of Russian immigrants who did not have Jewish mothers.  Their conversion was eased by a new law giving local rabbis the right to convene conversion courts.  The agreement with UTJ promises to take this right away and restore the authority of the hard-line chief rabbi.

All of the above are opposed by Moshe Kahlon’s new right wing party and by Naftali Bennett, who represents both the settlers and the modern Orthodox.  But they were an excuse for Avigdor Lieberman, who represents tens of thousands of Russian immigrants who are not Jewish according to halacha, to join the opposition.

Lieberman’s last minute announcement that he was giving up the foreign ministry and joining the opposition gave Naftali Bennett the opportunity to extort additional ministerial positions for his small party.  Besides the ministry of education, which had already been promised him, he demanded the ministry of justice for hawkish Ayelet Shachar and the ministry of agriculture that will supervise the World Zionist Congress Settlement Department.

Many of the middle class voters who voted for Yair Lapid in 2013 switched this year to another new party, Meir Kahlon’s Kulanu Party.

Mr. Kahlon did not take my advice in my last column to join with Isaac Herzog and form a government that would eliminate Netanyahu.  His agreement with Netanyahu puts him in a strong position.  He will hold the purse strings of the national treasury as the Minister of Finance.

One of his men will replace the Minister of Housing and Construction  from Naftali Bennett’s party.  The Housing Ministry will no longer allocate one-third of its budget to expand the settlements. Nor will there be a minister of housing who kept embarrassing the prime minister by announcing tenders for new settlement construction on the days that leading members of the Obama Administration such as Vice President Joe Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel.

But Uri Ariel, the former housing minister who is now the minister of agriculture, has taken over the settlement department of the World Zionist Congress.

He still has half a billion shekels to give to Jewish settlements without any publicity. Stav Shaffir, who is number 3 on the Labor list, has started a campaign to demand transparency on allocations to the settlements.

Kahlon’s new party is definitely opposed to the status quo.  The party also opposes the right wing nationality law, which is now before the Supreme Court.  It disenfranchises the Israeli Palestinians, who have successfully joined together Islamists and secularists and have won 13 seats.  They are planning “a day of rage” to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to permit the government to raze one of the 40 odd unrecognized Bedouin villages so a new Jewish city can be built.

This move, if carried out, is against Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. It contradicts the recent policies designed to appease the White House and the Europeans who have recognized symbolically a Palestinian state by easing life and helping the economy of the Palestinians in the West Bank. These moves include the release of billions of dollars of taxes collected for the Palestine Authority, the return of 15 fishing boats to Gaza fishermen, and permission for the flow of Israeli water and electricity to the new suburb of Ramallah built with funds from Qatar.

These moves were welcomed by the White House and State Department.

They also reflect a policy of liberal Israelis such as the Russian born member of the Knesset, Ksenia Svetlova, whom I met at the recent J Street convention.  She said, “Forget the two-state solution. It’s a long way off. Now, we should protect civil and humans rights of the Palestinians.”

In my opinion, protecting the civil rights of the occupied territories is the first step towards the two-state solution.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu is stuck with his 61 seat majority, which can only be saved by the addition of the Zionist Union of Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

As of press time, Herzog and Livni have announced that they will not dig Netanyahu out of the hole in which he has dug himself.

Akiva Eldar notes in Haaretz that less than a third of the members of the Knesset support the status quo in the occupied territories. He combines the Likud’s 30 seats with Naftali Bennett’s eight seats for 38 out of 120. Netanyahu has switched the Likud back and forth twice. He campaigned in 2013 and 2015 against a Palestine state. Both times he retracted after election.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, founding President of J Street, has asked that the new government commit itself to two states for two peoples.

*
Lurie, a centenarian who was a founder of the Arab-Jewish village of Neve Shalom, Israel, today lives in retirement in Delray Beach, Florida.  You may comment to jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.

__________________________________________________________________
Care to comment?  We require the following information on any letter for publication: 1) Your full name 2) Your city and state (or country) of residence. Letters lacking such information will be automatically deleted. San Diego Jewish World is intended as a forum for the entire Jewish community, whatever your political leanings. Letters may be posted below provided they are responsive to the article that prompted them, and civil in their tone.  Ad hominem attacks against any religion, country, gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical disability will not be considered for publication. There is a limit of one letter per writer on any given day.
__________________________________________________________________