Rabbi Yoram Abarjel, a former pro-Shas rabbi who switched over to the Yachad – Ha’am Itanu camp, said Sunday at a rally in Netivot that he has “been exposed to a recording” in which Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ztz”l says that he did not want to place Aryeh Deri at the helm of Shas, but was forced into it by people who took advantage of his failing health.

Rabbi Abarjel said earlier that Rabbi Yosef can be heard in the recording, giving Eli Yishai permission to start a new party that would compete with Shas.

Rabbi Abarjel told the audience: “Rabbi Ovadia said, in one of the most shocking lessons that we ever listened to, ‘do not judge me harshly, I did not do anything of my own will. I was coerced, they threatened me a little, that they will split off, that they will do this or that, and I am old already, I cannot even write.’”

The Rabbi allegedly said that Deri’s appointment to head Shas ahead of the 2013 elections was carried out against his will: “I tried to carry out a move that I object to strenuously, but I still believe that the man who is trusted throughout my home is Rabbi Eli Yishai.”

Eli Yishai’s party has passed the threshold for entering the Knesset in numerous polls from the last months, some of which show it with 5 MKs, others with 4. A poll Sunday indicated that it would not make it into the Knesset at all, however, probably prompting the party to up its rhetoric against its Shas rivals.

Yishai has said in the past that he knows things about Shas that – if released publicly – will create a situation in which “the party will not pass the threshold.”

Deri was chairman of Shas until a corruption conviction sent him to jail. He was replaced by Yishai, but eventually ousted Yishai after his release from prison. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was the spiritual leader of Shas from its founding.