The haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism are expected to present Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a list of demands in exchange for joining his new coalition, Channel 2 News reported on Wednesday.
Final results from Tuesday’s election have yet to be officially announced, but both parties are expected to win seven seats.
Netanyahu has stated several times that he intends to form a coalition which includes the Likud’s “natural partners”, namely the Jewish Home and the haredi parties, which were left out of the coalition last time due to a pact between Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid.
According to the Channel 2 report, Shas and United Torah Judaism are planning to cancel some of the moves implemented by Lapid in the last government and which are viewed by the haredi public as “harsh decrees”.
First and foremost, the report said, they will demand that Netanyahu cancel the criminal sanctions against haredim who evade the army draft as well as cuts of 50% in the budgets of kollel yeshivas, both decisions pushed by Lapid in the previous coalition.
In addition, Shas chairman Aryeh Deri has demanded a rise in minimum wage and lowering the VAT on basic commodities as a precondition for his party entering the coalition, two items which Netanyahu has indicated are on the Likud’s agenda.
Both Shas and United Torah Judaism are expected to request ministries they have held in the past, namely the Interior Ministry for Deri and the Ministry of Religious Affairs for another Shas MK. Shas is also expected to ask for responsibility over the Israel Lands Authority, a demand that has also been made by Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon.
United Torah Judaism is expect to request the Ministry of Health, in which MK Ya’akov Litzman served as deputy minister between 2009 and 2013, as well as the chairmanship of the Knesset’s Finance Committee, a role held by MK Moshe Gafni between 2009 and 2013.
On Tuesday, as polls opened in the elections, Litzman said his party would undo the “damages” done by the previous government.
Earlier Wednesday, speaking at the first Shas faction meeting after the elections, Deri said that “Netanyahu sucked our seats with a straw”, implying that some of the votes that went to the Likud were taken from his party, but still expressed hope that the next government will be “a government in which we will be partners, a more religious government which will maintain tradition.”
Deri also attacked Lapid and said that Shas’s seven seats are “a great achievement and all those who persecuted us are now doing an inventory on themselves to see how much they lost. Lapid dropped to 11 seats, and I suggest that everyone take out a calculator and see what a fall this is.”
