Following the controversy in the coalition and its failure to create a majority that would support the promotion of the “Rabbi Law”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to remove it from the Constitution Committee’s agenda. The committee was supposed to vote today (Wednesday) on advancing the law to the first reading. Due to their opposition to the law, the Likud faction decided to remove Knesset members Tali Gottlieb and Moshe Saada from the committee and replace them with MKs Tsega Malcho and Ofir Katz. However, following the announcement by Knesset member Yitzhak Kreuzer from Otzma Yehudit that he also opposes the advancement of the law, even the replacement of Gottlieb and Saada was not enough to ensure majority.
The main delegates in the coalition – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s people as well as ministers Yariv Levin and Aryeh Deri – marked the vote in the Constitutional Committee as a significant test case for the coalition. According to them, the law by itself is not significant and will not lead to the overthrow of the government. However, the conduct around him, they believed, shows the coalition’s ability to function. Conversations conducted by Deri, in which he made threats to dissolve the government, are also interpreted among the party leaders as more of a warning than a threat – if the law is not passed, the coalition will have great difficulty passing other laws.
The proposal was submitted by Knesset members Simcha Rotman (Religious Zionism) and Erez Malol (Shas), and it allows for the creation Hundreds of new jobs to the rabbis of cities, municipalities and neighborhoods, and the appointment of about 600 new rabbis. Rothman and Malol proposed that the composition of the assemblies that elect the city’s rabbis would be largely under the control of the Ministry of Religion.
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