Why Netanyahu wanted a ceasefire in the first place
IN Israel, even ceasefire deals have a chareidi angle.
“You can’t seriously talk about passing a draft law during wartime,” Shas chairman Aryeh Deri told me on multiple occasions throughout the war, as someone who sat in on closed security meetings over the past year. “After a ceasefire, the chances of an agreement with the blessing of the army will be much more realistic.”
Deri believed that in a reality in which Israel wakes up daily to the chilling phrase “hutar l’pirsum [it has been approved for publication],” no arrangement that has the effect of exempting Torah learners from the draft will ever become law, whether it lands in the Knesset plenum, the committees, or the attorney general’s office.
The ceasefire in Lebanon and the potential one in Gaza will make it possible to resume the professional conversation with the army. Contrary to the line pushed by politicians, the goals set by the professional echelon fully align with the terms the chareidim have signaled they can accept in the deliberations of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
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