Gallant's call to draft chareidim ensures paralysis and acrimony
“IF your goal is to bring down the government, you’re on the right track,” Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a tense phone call a day after Israel’s municipal elections.
“A chareidi takeover.” That’s how electoral victories by chareidi and chareidi-backed candidates in cities hitherto considered secular strongholds — Teveria, Tzfat, and Arad — were characterized by the Israeli media. While the general public voted with its feet, spending the day at the mall, chareidim all over the country stormed the polls, internal rifts driving them to max out their potential.
All three of the holy cities within the Green Line are now under chareidi control. In Jerusalem, where chareidim backed incumbent mayor Moshe Leon, the chareidi factions won an outright majority on the city council. Turning north, Tzfas, the city of Kabbalah, and Teveria, the city of Rabi Meir Baal Haneis, will be led by chareidi mayors for the first time since the founding of the state. Only the fourth holy city, Chevron, remains out of reach, its Jewish quarter a bastion of the religious Zionist settler movement.
But the chareidi celebration — which grated on many, including some within the community, against the backdrop of the daily casualties in Gaza — lasted less than a day. The day after the chareidi victory, Yoav Gallant convened a press conference at which he clarified that his Defense Ministry would only submit a bill regulating exemptions for yeshivah students with agreement from all components of the coalition.
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