Gafni
GafniFlash 90

Finance Committee Chairman MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) echoed Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman's call for new elections if a law permanently exempting yeshiva students from IDF service is not passed.

MK Gafni said at the start of the meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee Sunday: "I think things are being done here that are not fair in terms of the coalition, but we will wait to see if it will work out in the end. If it does not work out, we will go to elections."

He added, "I do not want to go to elections, despite the fact that among all the parties we are the party that constantly rises in the polls."

Gafni slammed the Likud-led government for its failure to respond to the Supreme Court decision to declare the previously draft law unconstitutional for granting certain sectors of the Israeli population exemptions from military service while the majority of Israeli Jews do not receive automatic exemptions.

"The left just makes more sense," Gafni continued. "I have always said this. But we went with the right, so this is the situation we have come to."

The haredi Knesset factions have drafted a bill which would enshrine Torah study in the "Basic Laws" of the State of Israel, circumventing the court ruling and making the exemptions for full-time yeshiva students permanent.

Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman threatened that the haredi parties would refuse to pass the budget for 2019 if the Draft Law is not passed. "If there's no Draft Law, there'll be no budget."

The Yisrael Beytenu party, led by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, has vehemently opposed the haredi Draft Law.