Beny Shlevich / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
JERUSALEM – United Torah Judaism leader Yaakov Asher said his faction will not join any government without advance commitments on the draft status of yeshiva and kollel students, the independence of Haredi education and the religion-state status quo.
In an interview published Tuesday, Asher presented the three demands as conditions for coalition participation, not an announcement that his faction had accepted a deal or chosen a partner.
“Without these conditions we will not be partners with anyone. Period,” he said, according to the interview write-up by Yishai Cohen. The quotation is translated from Hebrew.
The first demand concerns an arrangement for the military draft status of yeshiva students and men studying in kollels. Asher said the issue must be settled before a partnership can proceed. The published interview did not specify the legal terms of such an arrangement.
The second concerns the independence of Haredi education. Asher opposed making school funding conditional on accepting an imposed curriculum or outside intervention in what schools teach.
The third is preservation of the status quo on religion and state. Asher said he saw this as a responsibility concerning the character of the country as a whole, rather than only Haredi neighborhoods or cities.
Asked about reported discussions with the change bloc and the prospects of understandings becoming an agreement, Asher declined to predict an outcome. “Be patient, I don’t like gambling,” he said in remarks translated from Hebrew.
His comments did not announce that UTJ had joined a coalition, abandoned an existing political alignment or secured draft exemptions. They set out what he said any prospective coalition partner would need to commit to in advance.
The interview follows JBizNews coverage on November 6 of Avigdor Liberman’s willingness to compromise on the Haredi draft issue and Asher’s response welcoming flexibility. Tuesday’s remarks add explicit conditions; they do not establish that those conditions have been met.
What it means: Asher is defining UTJ’s negotiating requirements around Torah study, educational independence and religion-state arrangements. Whether any bloc will accept them, and what a legal draft arrangement would contain, remain unresolved in the published interview.
JBizNews Desk | Israel & Global Affairs
© JBizNews.com. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution is strictly prohibited.
.JPG){kind=link}