The coalition negotiations: Torah Judaism stated today (Tuesday) that they have not yet signed the replacement of the Speaker of the Knesset and clarified that if a decision is made to sign, one of the signature sheets of all faction members (of those that are always kept ready in the faction secretariat) will be handed over to the Likud, but this has not yet happened.
The price of delay? Torah Judaism: “The Likud despises us, we have moved further away from closure”|
Torah Judaism continues to freeze the negotiations with the Likud – and this is the reason
As I recall, progress was made tonight in the negotiations between the Likud and religious Zionism, in the emerging coalition they are moving towards the next challenge: the appointment of the temporary Knesset speaker. According to Likud sources, the candidate for appointment as the temporary Knesset speaker is Yariv Levin. The issue of the identity of the speaker of the Knesset is directly related to another issue: the identity of the next foreign minister. Benjamin Netanyahu will have to make a decision and do so soon, when the names mentioned in the context of the foreign affairs case are Amir Ohana and Israel Katz.
“In this situation we will not enter the government”: Torah Judaism’s firm message to Likud
In Torah Judaism, they were amazed to discover that the Jerusalem case was not only split up, but also emptied. Therefore, this morning (Tuesday) the party issued a firm message to the Likud: in this situation we will not enter the government, nor will we be in favor of replacing the speaker of the Knesset.
In the shadow of the controversies, Attorney Avraham Yostman (‘Torah Judaism’) was interviewed on the ‘Sheva Tessa’ program on 103FM and was asked if there is a possibility of forming a government in the near future. “I don’t know any room for optimism. It’s clear that if they make a little more progress with Smotrich, it’s getting closer,” he replied.
When asked why he is not optimistic, he answered that “We are a party with the size of 7 mandates, the coalition clearly and sharply needs us. We have not been spoken to for 10 days, we have no idea whether the essential issues for which we were elected will be accepted as the basic guidelines of the government or not. Promise all kinds of things, we People are settled, we have a clear agreement that needs to be signed by both parties as is customary in any coalition. This should be anchored in the agreement.”
Yostman elaborated on the main disputes in the talks: “There are a lot of issues involved. We talked about the need to compare the education budgets and sort out the erosion that has been going on for years, that one or another escalation clause should be enacted. Not necessarily money, education is related to money and money is not a dirty word. Related to Torah Judaism, not only are there difficulties but there is no negotiation, therefore we will have to sit down for a good few days in my estimation and make sure that all our essential requests and needs are met, some of them are legislation and some are budgets. The conscription law also needs to come to an orderly outline that will be acceptable to all parties, it’s complex.”
He also added that all these things should be in place before the formation of the government: “There will be an orderly agreement that will have many dozens of articles, close to 200 articles. We have prepared an orderly agreement. This is what we were elected for, we cannot disappoint our voters.”
To the question of how much time is left to discuss, he replied that “next week, in my estimation, it ends, it is possible to get an extension, it is possible that the legislator anticipated these cases. It is a bit of a shame that it spread so much. I think it is a mixture of everything from everything, certainly there is a certain intoxication of power. There were the first days when they talked about big offices until people settled down, and it took them a while to understand that with all due respect to their achievement, they will have to settle for more traditional offices for partnership. that we want, it could be managed at the same time.”
To the claim that members of Torah Judaism are divided, Yostman noted that “we know how to fight, when we fight we do it well, but in the context of the coalition agreement we have two people who lead the agreement. The agreement is one, the clauses are uniform. We even argue, but we act with one mind.”
With regard to the section on canceling Reform conversion, he explained: “We want to get answers, Minister Kahane initiated a reform so that city rabbis can convert, we oppose it. We do not think that this can be common property, it should remain under the authority of the Chief Rabbinate. One of the things we will stand by.”
Assisted in the preparation of the article: Shani Romano 103FM