Prime Minister Netanyahu is under enormous pressure. Since this morning, he’s held a long string of meetings and phone calls—mostly with Shas representatives, but not only.
It seems the Attorney General’s strategy has succeeded beyond expectations. After the arrests and wave of decrees, many ultra-Orthodox lawmakers are saying: bring us a draft law—and we’re with you.
1+For the first time since the election, Netanyahu spoke this morning with United Torah Judaism chairman MK Yaakov Asher. Asher is amplifying the concern, telling the prime minister that UTJ hasn’t yet decided who it will recommend to the president and is waiting for the return of leading rabbis from their fundraising trip for Torah institutions abroad.
Netanyahu fears—and rightly so—that the left, which has cynically wielded this issue as a political weapon, will give everything just to achieve its “supreme goal”: removing Netanyahu. The ultra-Orthodox temptation is huge. That’s why there’s a new plan on the table.
Some in Netanyahu’s circle are proposing to take this all the way and expose the left in its nakedness. In other words: let United Torah Judaism talk with Gadi Eisenkot and let him solve the central obstacle to a draft law—the judicial system.
1+Netanyahu’s circle believes Eisenkot will succeed in getting the judicial system to approve a version of the law acceptable to United Torah Judaism. And then, when Eisenkot presents that same blank page with legal approval enabling that draft law—Netanyahu can race forward and steal back UTJ’s support to form a right-wing government that will pass the very draft law Eisenkot himself proposed.