Lieberman praises Haredim's moderate position on IDF draft law
'Anyone who was looking for an excuse to call early elections will have to find another excuse,' Lieberman says after Agudat Yisrael's Council of Torah Sages decides not to order its MKs to quit the government over the IDF draft law, which would have toppled the coalition.
"This is a level-headed and responsible decision," Lieberman said at his Yisrael Beytenu faction meeting. "Anyone who was looking for an excuse to call early elections will have to find another excuse."
The existing Israeli Defense Service Law expires in December after the HCJ deemed it unconstitutional. The Knesset must now pass an alternative law before then, otherwise all yeshiva students would ostensibly be subject to compulsory military service.
The members of the Council form the spiritual leadership of the Chassidic faction of United Torah Judaism, headed by Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, the main and more influential of the two Ashkenazi Haredi groups that make up UTJ.
Litzman himself has said in recent months that he will not allow the law to pass, even threatening to resign. The Degel Hatorah faction in UTJ, led by MK Moshe Gafni, and the Sephardic Shas party led by Aryeh Deri, tend to accept the present outline of the bill, wishing to avoid an election cycle with the subject of Haredi IDF enlistment at its center.
On Monday morning, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called the crisis over the IDF draft law a "fake crisis," noting the matter was "completely solvable."
"The governmental bill proposal is good, we can make several fixes to it and pass it," Shaked told Ynet in an interview. "The Haredim presented a more moderate position yesterday, and we can reach agreements based on that."
"All coalition heads are saying the same thing—we all believe this government needs to live out its term... but if the prime minister wants to call elections, then we probably will have early elections," she continued.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett echoed Shaked's comments at his own Bayit Yehudi faction meeting. "The IDF draft issue is solvable and the attempt to create a crisis is fake to its core. Both Lieberman and the Haredim know and can reach a solution," he said, adding, "As far as we're concerned, the elections have one date: November 2019."
Speaking at his Kulanu faction meeting, Finance Minister Kahlon said his party "would only support a law that is acceptable to the military. The IDF is the one recruiting soldiers, not rabbis or politicians."
He lamented recent discourse against the IDF and Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, saying "they're being accused of allegations that are disconnected from reality... get the military out of politics, out of this discourse. The IDF chief is exceptional and the military is excellent. He doesn't need to advice of politicians who are trying to gather votes in the primaries at the expense of the military."
Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay, who is not a member of Knesset, called on other opposition parties to help "bring down this government over the IDF draft law."
"All it takes is for (Yesh Atid leader) Lapid to vote against, but he decided to support the 'IDF draft dodging law' and is used as a flak jacket for the Netanyahu government for a seat in the next government," Gabbay accused.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, meanwhile, asserted that "All of the issues being talked about as unsolvable will stay with us on the day after the elections."
"I don't really buy the theory that the prime minister wants to call early elections," he added in an interview with Ynet ahead of the opening of the Knesset's winter session.
Outside the Knesset, meanwhile, some 20 LGBT activists protested and demanded equal rights to the gay community. Earlier, some 15 members of the "Disabled Panthers" group protested and demanded to raise their disability benefits to equal minimum wage.
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Moran Azulay, Attila Somfalvi, Shahar Hay contributed to this story.
