The problem with that is the Charedi parties have declared that they will not join any government coalition that does not rescind the laws they view as anti Charedi implemented by the current government. Just to mention that 2 more egregious ones in their eyes, the new law that requires all Charedim to register for the draft and that in a few years will require them to fill the large quotas set for army service. The 2nd one is the law that cut funding to their schools – which do not have the government mandated core curriculum.
The Charedi parties must feel vindicated. They may even believe that their demands will be met. Who knows? Maybe they will. The Prime Minister knows what their demands are. If he’s looking at the Charedi parties to supplant the left of center parties that are in his coalition now, he must think he can satisfy their demands, somehow.
I don’t know if he will succeed. I don’t even know if his party will win the mandate to form a new government. Stranger things have happened. We may end up with a new Prime Minister next March. It does however seem that he will be re-elected… and his party, Likud, will be even stronger.
Assuming Netanyahu’s party wins the election, I’m not so sure he will be able to rescind those laws. What the vast majority of Kenesset is in agreement on – despite their disparate politics – are those laws. I don’t see them rescinding them. If the Charedi parties are serious about their demands, I don’t see how he will form a new government with them.
There are several repercussions to all this. They were outlined by Yesh Atid MK, Rabbi Dov Lipman in a Jerusalem Post article.
Going back to the status quo ante will perpetuate an untenable situation that fostered resentment by the secular population against Charedim who were exempted wholesale from serving their country. It will also perpetuate the poverty experienced by Charedim for lack of any preparation for the workplace by their educational system. Restoring funding to schools that have no secular studies will help exactly no one.
A word about Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. They may very well be the biggest loser here. A poll taken recently showed they would lose about ten seats in a new election. Recent polls sow Yesh Atid losing major support from the electorate.
Charedi parties must be overjoyed at this prospect – having painted Lapid as anti religious. It is Yesh Atid after all that pushed for the changes in the law. Which Charedim saw as anti Charedi and so vigorously protested.
But I did not see Yesh Atid that way at all. Lapid brought some original thinkers to the Knesset. People that might never have otherwise served. I’ll bet no one was more surprised at the 19 seats his party won than Yair Lapid.
I don’t know all of his party’s Kenesset members. But I do know who 4 of them are. There is Lapid himself. And then there is Rabbi Shai Piron who was a religious Zionist Rosh Yeshiva in Petach Tikvah. Another is Rabbi Dov Lipman who brought some fresh religious perspective into the Knesset. And they both had the courage to stick with their party’s plan to restructure Charedi society. In my view for the better. Much better. And finally there is Ruth Calderon, an admittedly non observant lover of Torah study. If I understand correctly she was the first Knesset member to ever give a Talmud lecture in that august body.
The fact that Lapid chose these three people to join his party makes any accusation that he is anti religious ridiculous in my view. Those who say MKs Lipman and Piron were duped or enticed by the promise of political power to join him but are in reality the religious fig leafs for Lapid’s real agenda are mistaken in my view. From everything I have seen, heard or read about them, I believe they are as sincere and dedicated to the Torah and the Jewish people as humanly possible.