Haredi party threatens to topple government unless it gets NIS 1 billion for yeshivas

Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, threatened on Friday to oppose the 2025 state budget, which would topple the government, unless it allocates more than a billion shekels in coalition funds for Haredi yeshivas.

It is Goldknopf’s second threat to the continued stability of the coalition in less than a week, and the latest in a string of Haredi ultimatums that so far have all been backed down from.

In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs published by the Ynet news site, Goldknopf complained that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had recently promised him the funds, they were not included in a list of transfers set to be approved by the cabinet on Sunday morning.

Goldknopf called on Fuchs to rectify the situation “immediately” in order to ensure his support for the budget in the Knesset.

The 2025 state budget must be passed by the end of March or the government will automatically fall, triggering early elections.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, the cabinet is expected to transfer 1.3 billion shekels ($370 million) in coalition funds for yeshiva budgets to the ultra-Orthodox in the coming days. Responding to Kan’s report, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused the government of “corruption,” describing the Haredi educational funds as “loot.”

The enlistment crisis

Goldknopf’s latest threat against the budget comes only days after he warned that he would topple the government if it does not approve a law largely excluding the ultra-Orthodox from IDF conscription prior to the passage of the state budget.

According to a report Wednesday in the Hamodia daily, which is affiliated with Goldknopf’s Gur Hasidic movement, the UTJ chief complained during a faction meeting in the Knesset that a bill enshrining yeshiva students’ military exemptions should have been passed a long time ago, but Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly given “excuses” and postponed its advancement.

“We have two options before us: either they put off the conscription bill and we go to summer elections, or they insist on the conscription bill before the budget and the government completes its term,” Goldknopf insisted.

While cautioning that the party will not make any final decision before obtaining guidance from its rabbinic leadership, Goldknopf declared that the enlistment bill should be prioritized as a condition for the government’s continuation, and that it should “be made clear to the general public” that unless it is passed before the budget, the enlistment bill “will never be enacted.”

According to Hebrew press reports, at the weekly cabinet meeting last week, Netanyahu indicated that the budget would be passed first. In response, Goldknopf was said to have asked rhetorically why his party was remaining in the government.

In June, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.

Haredi leaders vehemently oppose members of the community serving in the military, fearing they will be secularized. The issue, long a sensitive one in Israeli public discourse due to the perceived inequality created by the blanket exemption, has taken on renewed urgency as the military is short of manpower amid a multifront war.

Under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox allies, Netanyahu has repeatedly promised a quick resolution to the issue in recent months.

Despite the prime minister’s assurances, a bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has stated that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”

A history of threats

Goldknopf has repeatedly issued ultimatums linking the budget to the enlistment issue but has failed to follow through.

In October, UTJ appeared to backtrack from a threat to derail state budget talks only hours after demanding that the government quickly pass a new conscription law.

Instead, the party’s rabbinic leadership reportedly instructed the party leadership to focus on a bill aimed at circumventing a High Court ruling that such financial support is illegal in cases where the father should be serving in the Israel Defense Forces but is not.

The party later issued a public warning that it would boycott all votes on coalition legislation if the bill was not advanced. However, due to opposition from coalition lawmakers, Netanyahu was forced to remove the bill from the Knesset agenda, and UTJ continued to vote with the coalition.

In December, Agudat Yisrael, Goldknopf’s faction within UTJ, threatened to oppose a key budget bill, demanding that the coalition meet their demands before they begin voting with it again.

However, Likud officials managed to head off opposition by two members of Agudat Yisrael, with MKs Yisrael Eichler and Moshe Roth staying away rather than voting against the coalition, denying what would have been a rare victory to the opposition. UTJ’s Yaakov Tessler voted with the opposition.

In a similar move, last month, Aryeh Deri, the chairman of the Haredi Shas party, warned Netanyahu that he had two months to resolve the status of yeshiva students or “we’ll go to elections.”

The following day, Shas spokesman Asher Medina walked the statement back, telling Channel 12 that his party would “not topple the right-wing government. There is no threat and no ultimatum.”

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