Senior Blue&White officials are initiating a new compromise proposal to be presented in the opening talks with Likud, according to which a coalition without the Haredi parties will be formed to start, so that during the first months following the establishment of the coalition, some religion and state laws can be passed by the Knesset, Reshet Bet radio reported Sunday morning.
One of these laws will be the IDF recruitment law, followed by the repeal of the Shabbat supermarkets law, and maybe one other law related to religion and state affairs, possibly a law leaving it up to the municipalities to operate buses on Shabbat.
This way, Blue&White would be able to show some significant achievements in religion and state legislation, and in return accept Netanyahu as the first PM in a rotation coalition government. This would boost Netanyahu’s power while he faces corruption indictments in court, a process estimated to take about a year.
After a few months, according to the Blue&White, proposal, when those issues of religion and state had been settled by the Knesset, the Haredi parties could be invited to join the coalition free of the blemish of supporting anti-halachic legislation.
According to Reshet Bet, Blue&White even suggested coordinating these moves in advance with the Haredi parties.
And once the Haredim are inside, the coalition partners would agree not to promote any additional religion and state legislation.
If this report is true (it is authored by Zeev Kam, who in the past released his share of wild geese), then it would appear that under Gantz, Lapid, Yaalon and Ashkenazi, Blue&White has matched the level of cynicism that took Netanyahu 13 years in office to cultivate.