Haredi boycott forces cancellation of coalition leaders’ meeting

A planned meeting of coalition leaders for Tuesday evening was canceled after the Haredi boycott widened. The session was meant to build agreement on a shared election date and present an image of unity within the coalition.

The cancellation followed announcements from Shas leader Aryeh Deri and United Torah Judaism lawmaker and Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni that they would not attend. Without them, the meeting would have been reduced to a small forum with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir, so the decision was made to scrap it.

The meeting was also supposed to discuss what the coalition would advance in the Knesset before any election, including judicial overhaul legislation, governance bills and demands from the Haredi parties. Their absence underscored the depth of the crisis and made the session effectively meaningless.

The backdrop is the dispute over the draft law. In a letter from Lithuanian stream leader Rabbi Dov Lando, published after the law was not advanced, Degel HaTorah said it no longer sees itself as part of the right-wing bloc and is not bound by it, not only in the current Knesset but also after the next election.