Shas, Cabinet Officials Meet With UTJ in Eleventh-Hour Bid to Avert Knesset Dissolution

Top coalition figures and senior Shas members held urgent talks with United Torah Judaism (UTJ) lawmakers in the Knesset Wednesday, seeking to avoid or at least delay a government dissolution. UTJ has stated that barring a resolution of the Charedi enlistment issue, they will vote in favor of calling for new elections and bringing down the coalition. Shas signaled that it would do the same but an official decision from its Moetzet Chachmei Hatorah will be revealed later in the day, the party’s Haderech news outlet said.

In response, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs and coalition whip Ofir Katz met with UTJ lawmakers, joined by Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik, to attempt to forge a compromise.

The Charedi UTJ and Shas parties had previously stated they would support the dissolution measure unless legislation was advanced to secure yeshiva students’ exemption from military service. Despite the public stance, sources close to Shas told the Times of Israel that the party is working behind the scenes to postpone the vote and stabilize the coalition.

Currently, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc controls 68 out of 120 Knesset seats. That means if both Shas and UTJ vote for dissolution, the measure is likely to pass its preliminary reading. But the process requires three additional plenum votes before it can take effect.

UTJ chair Rabbi Yitzchak Goldknopf told Charedi news outlets that his party was acting under rabbinic instruction: “They say that we need to vote to dissolve the Knesset so we will vote. There is no doubt,” he said.

In a related move, Shas and UTJ have paused their partial legislative boycott, Ynet reported, allowing coalition business to proceed in a bid to create room for compromise. The boycott had stalled all private member bills for several weeks.

The decision to temporarily end the boycott was made to permit Charedi lawmakers to support coalition legislation and delay the dissolution vote, which is now expected to be held in the evening. The packed Knesset agenda is seen as a tactic to buy time for further talks.

Shas members, meanwhile, is pressuring Degel HaTorah, the Litvishe faction within UTJ, to delay its support for dissolving the Knesset by at least another week. According to Ynet, the aim is to give Netanyahu more time to finalize a legislative path. However, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chair Yuli Edelstein has reportedly been sidelined from negotiations until later in the day.

Despite the behind-the-scenes efforts, UTJ MK Moshe Roth expressed little optimism. “There’s nobody excited about this. It’s a last resort but we have no choice,” he told The Times of Israel, emphasizing that the dispute is fundamentally about securing a legal exemption framework for full-time yeshiva students.

Roth, a member of the Agudat Yisrael faction of UTJ, said he was unaware of any formal coordination between Shas and Degel HaTorah.

The Charedi news outlet Kikar Shabbat quoted senior officials from both Shas and Degel HaTorah as saying, “If there is no breakthrough, we will vote in favor of dissolving the Knesset, but we must remember that the goal is not elections but the regulation of the status of yeshiva students. We will do everything to regulate their status.”

If the dissolution bill fails, opposition parties would be barred from reintroducing such a measure for six months.