In a World Turned Upside Down, Israeli Politics is Business as Usual
The events of October 7, the judicial overhaul, continuous war, murderous violence on the streets, a spiraling cost of living—none of these have been enough to destabilize the coalition. Will it be the conflict over drafting yeshiva students that ultimately brings down the Netanyahu government?
MK Aryeh Deri speaks with MK Moshe Gafni at a plenum session at the assembly hall of the Knesset | Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
On Wednesday morning, the Knesset opposition parties issued a statement of their plan to move forward with a bill to dissolve Knesset. While at this time it did not lead to the dissolution of the Knesset and to early elections, we know that disagreements over religion and state, and particularly those relating to Shabbat and to ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) conscription, have a history of threatening coalitions, bringing down governments, and resulting in early elections. Since the establishment of the state, there have been many political crises rooted in arguments over religion and state matters, and since 2012, the most significant of these crises have been due to the Military Service Law – as is largely the case today. Here, we review some of the most prominent religion and state coalitionary crises.
One of the bitter debates during the early days of the State concerned the issue of education: Which education stream (religious or secular) should the children of immigrants living in transit camps be sent to? Mapai, the ruling party, instructed government employees in the transit camps to recommend to parents that they send their children to the religious sub-stream of the (secular) workers’ education system, while the national religious and Haredi parties (which operated in the first Knesset as a united faction) strongly opposed this, and demanded that parents only be given the opportunity to send their children to the separate religious streams. Against this background, the Minister of Religious Affairs resigned, and the crisis eventually led to early elections for the second Knesset. From a historical perspective, it is highly symbolic that the first Knesset assembly of the State of Israel did not complete its term due to a dispute over matters of religion and state.
Following the 1951 elections, a government was formed that included the national religious and Haredi parties. A government initiative to promote the conscription of religious young women for military or national service was met with strong opposition from the Haredi parties. These parties exited the coalition in September 1952, leaving it with only 60 Knesset members. Following this crisis, the disintegration of the coalition accelerated, and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion resigned and formed a new government with a different composition, this time without the Haredi parties. These remained in the opposition for many years, and only returned to government after the political upheaval of 1977.
Minister of the Interior Yisrael Bar Yehuda (Mapam) issued instructions to Interior Ministry officials to register anyone as a Jew who has declared themselves as such, unless it could be proven that they were lying. This directive, which ran contrary to the halakhic definition of "who is a Jew", led to the resignation from the government of the ministers of the National Religious Party (Mafdal), though despite this exit, the coalition retained a majority in the Knesset. The government continued to serve for another year after the crisis, and the 1959 elections were held on time.
In December 1976, a celebratory ceremony was held at Ben Gurion Airport to welcome the first shipment of F-15 aircraft from the United States. The Haredi parties (which were not part of the coalition) submitted a motion of no confidence in the government due to concerns about possible desecration of the Sabbath at a state ceremony. Members of the National Religious Party, which was part of the coalition, abstained in the vote. Though the government survived the no-confidence vote, Prime Minister Rabin dismissed the ministers of the National Religious Party and brought forward the Knesset elections. In the elections held in May 1977, the Likud won and came to power for the first time.
This crisis erupted following the transportation of a large electric turbine by the Israel Electric Corporation during the Sabbath. The United Torah Judaism faction withdrew from the coalition (headed by Ehud Barak), but Shas and the National Religious Party remained in the government, which continued to serve until it disintegrated, less than a year later, due to disagreement over foreign policy.
The "Tal Law" was enacted by the Knesset in 2002 with the aim of providing incentives for some yeshiva students to enlist in the IDF and to solve the problem of inequality in "sharing the burden" of military service. After it had been in force for ten years, a petition against the law was submitted to the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled that the law had not led to a change in the situation and that the inequality remained. The Court ordered the Knesset to enact a new arrangement for drafting yeshiva students. Consequently, the coalition almost fell apart, but survived for a short period of time due to the overnight maneuver of adding Kadima and to the establishment of a committee to examine the issue and formulate recommendations (the Plesner Committee). The Haredi parties boycotted this committee, and even though it reached the stage of preparing to publish recommendations for an outline for a new law, Prime Minister Netanyahu preferred not to anger his Haredi allies, dismissed the committee, and called early elections.
Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) submitted his resignation from the government in November 2017 in protest against maintenance work carried out by Israel Railways during Shabbat, which he saw as a blatant violation of the religion-state "status quo". However, the political impact of his resignation was limited, as the United Torah Judaism faction did not withdraw from the coalition.
Following the Supreme Court ruling in 2017 that the Military Service Law that was in force at the time would be struck down within a year, a severe coalition crisis arose in the 34th government (the fourth Netanyahu government) due to disagreement over the wording of a new law and the sanctions that would be included in it. Avigdor Lieberman, the defense minister at the time, sought to impose economic sanctions on yeshivot that did not meet the conscription quota, which was vehemently opposed by the Haredi parties. In the end, the new Military Service Law was not advanced, Lieberman later resigned from the coalition due to criticism of the government’s policy toward Hamas, and the elections were brought forward.
Knesset member Idit Silman of the Yamina faction announced she is leaving the coalition that was supporting the "government of change" (Bennett-Lapid), due to a dispute with Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) over his directive to adhere to the HCJ ruling not to prevent visitors from bringing hametz onto hospital grounds during Passover. Her resignation set in motion a series of steps that ultimately led to early elections.
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Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition has already survived crises related to religion and state (regarding the Rabbis Law and daycare subsidies for yeshiva students). But the Military Service Law is a stubborn issue with the potential to tear the coalition apart. Due to the longstanding dependence of Israeli governments on the Haredi parties (and previously on the national religious parties), issues of religion and state have repeatedly been the cause of coalitionary crises. However, given that since 2019, and especially since October 7, the State of Israel has been gripped by crisis on a historical level, it is notable that these issues are still at the heart of coalitionary unrest—as if politics operate in a parallel dimension.