Budget likely to advance after crisis over conscription, as Haredi factions signal support |
The Knesset was expected to take its initial vote on the 2026 state budget draft on Wednesday, in a test of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government at a time when it has been beset by political fractures.
Netanyahu’s coalition has splintered over the war in Gaza, the ceasefire in October that halted it, and demands by ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties to exempt yeshiva students from mandatory military service.
The budget, as well as an accompanying economic plan, faces an uphill battle for approval as the government has become increasingly polarized. By law, it must be approved by the end of March, or an early election would be triggered (as 2026 is an election year, it would likely mean a vote would be called for late June or July, instead of October).
But possibly signaling that the coalition had found a way forward, two ultra-Orthodox factions in Netanyahu’s coalition, Degel HaTorah and Shas, indicated in the afternoon that they were likely to support the budget in its first reading, enabling the measure to advance, after disagreement over the Haredi conscription regulation bill postponed the budget vote by two days.
Following a meeting between Haredi MKs, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, committee legal adviser Miri Frenkel Shor and coalition whip Ofir Katz, a spokesman for Degel HaTorah spiritual leader Rabbi Dov Lando said that the ultra-Orthodox faction would “support the budget law on first reading and will insist that the conscription law be completed before bringing the budget law to second and third readings.”
In response, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid complained that ultra-Orthodox political operatives had “set up an alternative Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for themselves, and together with Bismuth and Ofir Katz they are sitting there and exerting heavy pressure on the committee’s legal adviser, trying to push her to approve changes that the ultra-Orthodox parties........