Labor Minister Yoav Ben Tzur has accepted a compromise offered by the High Court of Justice over the fight between the attorney general and the government surrounding child daycare subsidies for the ultra-Orthodox population.
The court on Monday suggested that Ben Tzur, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, end his months-long refusal to publish criteria for receiving the subsidy, and in return, ultra-Orthodox families in which the father is obligated to perform military service but has failed to enlist will receive the subsidy for the first six months of this academic year.
The fight erupted after the High Court ruled in June that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students were obligated to perform military service after the law for blanket exemptions expired. In the same ruling, the court determined that the state could not fund such students. Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara said this meant that ultra-Orthodox families could not receive child daycare subsidies if the father had dodged the draft.
Following the attorney general’s determination, Ben Tzur refused to publish the criteria for receiving the subsidy for all 75,000 qualifying families, holding up the disbursement of some NIS 200 million ($53.5 million) and creating severe financial headaches for the daycare centers.
This prompted several organizations, including those who run such daycare centers, to petition the High Court against Ben Tzur, while an ultra-Orthodox group petitioned the court against the attorney general’s position.
Following a hearing on all the petitions on Monday, the High Court proposed its compromise, which Ben Tzur accepted on Wednesday.
Shas MK Yoav Ben-Tzur speaks during a campaign event of the Shas party in Tiberias, February 27, 2020. (David Cohen/Flash90)
The minister will now publish the criteria for receiving the subsidies for all qualifying families within the next month, while qualifying ultra-Orthodox families will receive the subsidies retroactively for the first three months of this academic year and the coming three months.
The government is currently advancing a bill, at the behest of the ultra-Orthodox parties, to guarantee the families of all ultra-Orthodox men access to the benefits — even those who have not performed military service.
If that bill is not passed within three months, then the subsidies for such families will be cut off.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the petitioning organizations against Ben Tzur, said on Monday it was opposed to the court’s compromise, saying it gave “an additional extension to the invalid and illegal link between exemption from the obligation to enlist and the daycare subsidies.” The Emet L’Yaakov organization, which petitioned the court against the attorney general’s position, welcomed the compromise, describing it as a “significant victory” in its efforts to secure the rights of ultra-Orthodox parents.
“We will continue to use all means to ensure the rights of parents and children, and to fight any attempt to harm equal opportunities,” the organization said, but added that legislation was needed to create a more stable environment for long-term family planning.
The child daycare subsidies are worth between NIS 1,100 ($294) and NIS 1,600 ($428) per child each month, with children up to the age of three being eligible. These payments are a crucial part of many ultra-Orthodox families’ household income, and the revocation of the funds created severe political difficulties for the coalition in the face of intense anger by the Haredi political parties.
According to Emet L’Yaakov, some 80,000 children are funded by the subsidies. Of those roughly 10,000 are from ultra-Orthodox families in which the father has failed to enlist to the IDF despite a legal obligation to do so.
Campaigners for drafting ultra-Orthodox men into the army, as well as opposition MKs, have denounced efforts to secure ongoing child daycare subsidies for families where the father has evaded the draft.
MK Matan Kahana of National Unity said the legislation being advanced by the government “spat in the face of IDF reservists,” and said the impact of the bill would be to “whitewash and fund draft evasion.”
Emet L’Yaakov argued, however, that blocking the subsidy from such families punished ultra-Orthodox children and working mothers, and pointed to a High Court ruling guaranteeing welfare payments for the children of Palestinian terrorists as a precedent for its position.
