A new survey of the haredi community shows that the vast majority does not want the haredi parties - Sephardic-haredi Shas and Ashkenazic-haredi United Torah Judaism (UTJ) - to join the current government, Kikar Hashabbat reported.
The survey, conducted by Kikar Hashabbat and the Netunei Emet survey institute, included 1,446 haredi participants.
When asked who they would vote for if elections were held today, 87% of Shas voters said they would vote for their party again, as did 85% of United Torah Judaism voters. Six percent of each party's constituents said they would vote for MK Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party, while 5% of each said they would vote for the other haredi party instead of their own.
Fifty-four percent of Religious Zionism's voters would vote for the same party again, while 3% said they would vote for Shas and 3% said they would support UTJ.
When asked which Knesset member best represented haredi interests, 15.5% named MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ), while 15% named MK Aryeh Deri (Shas). The pair were followed by 9.5% support for MK Uri Maklev (UTJ), and MK Yakov Asher with 8.3% of the vote. MK Michael Malkieli (Shas) received 8.1% of the vote, with MK Moshe Arbel (Shas) coming in with 6.8%, MK Yitzhak Pindrus (UTJ) with 5.2%, MK Meir Porush (UTJ) with 4.8%, and MK Yakov Litzman (UTJ) with just 4%.
When asked which MK represents the social interests of all Israel's citizens, MK Deri had the most support (16.9%), followed by MK Gafni with 11.5%, MK Maklev with 10.6%, and MK Arbel with 9.4%.
Regarding whether the haredi parties were correct in their insistence on only joining a coalition led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 72.9% said the parties made the correct decision, while 16.2% said they made a mistake and 10.5% said they have no opinion on the matter.
This response lines up with the results of a previous poll, in which 70% of the haredi public had negative feelings on Netanyahu leaving the Prime Minister's Office, and 73% said the haredi community has great gratitude towards Netanyahu.
When asked whether the haredi parties should join the coalition, 73% said no, while 15% said yes and 12% had no opinion.
Participants were also asked whether they believe that the current unity government harms the haredi community. Responding to this query, 97% said the current government is harmful to the haredi sector, while 85% said it harms the haredi lifestyle and 84% said it harms haredi education.