Since United Torah Judaism’s dramatic exit from the right-wing bloc, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying intensively to pull Haredi parties back into his camp. He met repeatedly with figures from Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael and approved nearly every legislative demand they raised, including the Basic Law on Torah study, the daycare subsidies bill, and a bill to cancel arrests of Haredi draft dodgers. His two goals were to reunite the right-wing bloc and buy time so elections would be held on October 20, the date he prefers, and he has so far succeeded.
The Haredi parties, meanwhile, have gained little. Their leaders have failed to unite around a single demand, with Aryeh Deri pushing the arrests bill and Moshe Gafni insisting on the daycare bill. Neither measure has a realistic legal path, but both could have offered a political win. Netanyahu’s office has welcomed the split, saying last week there was no majority for the daycare bill and now proposing to advance a bill dissolving the Knesset without first promoting the arrests bill.
Haredi officials say Netanyahu has still not made a final decision on whether to dissolve the Knesset and is expected to decide within the next two days. They say he understands that disappointing the Haredim could revive talk about their place in the right-wing bloc, a debate he has recently managed to quiet, while also knowing they have no real alternative.
In closed talks, party leaders say Netanyahu has recently lost self-confidence because of the crisis in his relationship with Donald Trump. They say he is spending his time trying to prevent Trump from forcing him to withdraw from southern Lebanon, and therefore has no real capacity to drive major legislation. His aides, they claim, are mostly absent rather than effective, and Netanyahu is running a fractured office staffed by people they считают unfit for their roles.
