Due to delays in advancing the draft exemption law, the ultra-Orthodox parties announced overnight between Wednesday and Thursday that they would not support a vote to split the Arrangements Law - the comprehensive legislative package presented alongside the State Budget to implement government economic policies and structural reforms - in the Knesset plenum, prompting the proposal to be removed from the agenda.
The postponement jeopardizes approval of the state budget and the passage of reforms Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is seeking to advance through the Arrangements Law. Failure to pass a state budget could lead to the dissolution of the Knesset and to early elections.
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(Photos: Yair Sagi, Reuven Castro, Amit Shaavi/AFP, Alex Kolomoisky, Yoav Dudkevich/AP)
According to the coalition’s planned timetable, presentation of the bill’s text in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee was supposed to take place next Wednesday. The ultra-Orthodox parties said, however, that the legislation remains stalled. According to the parties, there had been no progress over the past week in drafting and preparing the bill, making it impossible to meet the set deadline.
If the votes continue to be delayed, the coalition will not have sufficient time to advance various reforms, including the disputed dairy reform. As a result of the crisis, approval of the split of the Arrangements Law will be postponed to Monday, meaning budget deliberations will be delayed by three days.
Knesset legal advisor Sagit Afik ruled that certain provisions of the Arrangements Law must be split into separate bills, arguing they are not related to the core of the budget, including the dairy reform.
In a legal opinion circulated ahead of the committee discussion on splitting the Arrangements Law among committees, Afik noted that the budget bill and the Arrangements Law were submitted to the Knesset about two and a half months late. She said that over the years there has been sharp criticism of the use of the Arrangements Law, among other reasons because of the tight legislative timelines, the harm to the Knesset’s standing caused by lump-sum voting on a wide range of issues and the lack of maturity of some of the arrangements included.
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If the votes continue to be delayed, the coalition will not have sufficient time to advance various reforms, including the disputed dairy re
Afik added that, in a ruling issued this year, the Supreme Court placed a “warning sign” against using the Arrangements Law as a framework for legislation that clearly exceeds its purposes. She emphasized that this year’s Arrangements Law runs to about 420 pages, an exceptionally large scope, even given that eight budgets have been approved over the past three years.
This, according to Afik, is an unprecedented situation in which an almost absolute majority of the arrangements lack a direct connection to the state budget. In some cases, preparatory work was partial or not carried out in coordination with the government ministry tasked with implementing the reform, and at times there is even opposition from that ministry to the proposed arrangement.