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Rift over ultra-Orthodox education funding deepens Israel coalition woes

September 6, 2024 at 3:40 pm

Dozens of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim clash with the Israeli police as they stage a sit-in protest against the compulsory military service at the highway in Bnei Brak, Israel on June 27, 2024. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties, already at odds with coalition partners over demands to draft young religious men into the army, are again testing the unity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with a challenge over education funding, Reuters reports.

The latest rift centres on an ultra-Orthodox push for schools in their separate education system to receive the same benefits as state-run schools, especially their “New Horizon” programme that adds school hours and sharply hikes teacher pay.

“For a year we have been fighting for the entry of ‘New Horizon’ into ultra-Orthodox institutions. There is no reason for our teachers to be discriminated against,” said ultra-Orthodox Education Minister, Haim Biton.

Biton, a member of Shas, one of two Orthodox parties in the right-wing coalition, said they would not quit the government over the issue. But the other ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), notified the coalition whip that, until the funding issue was resolved, it would boycott votes in parliament.

READ: Ultra-Orthodox Jews clash with Israel police near army’s recruitment office

Coalition whip, Ophir Katz, said he was working to avert a showdown ahead of a vote on a 3.4 billion shekel ($918.35 million) budget boost to help fund tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes by rocket fire from Lebanon.

The dispute is the latest of many that have highlighted both the tensions within Netanyahu’s unwieldy coalition through almost two years of near-constant crisis, punctuated by mass protests against judicial reforms and the Gaza war.

With a grouping of religious and hard line nationalist-religious parties and his own right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu controls 64 of parliament’s 120 seats but, from the start, relations between ministers have been fractious.

Far-right parties led by Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have repeatedly shaken the coalition over issues, including the handling of the Gaza war, threatening to leave over any move, backed by Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, toward a deal to end the conflict.

The ultra-Orthodox parties have been less vocal about the conduct of the war but have fought hard for benefits for their Haredi community, who comprise around 13 per cent of the population.

Tensions have run especially high over the recent abolition of an exemption long enjoyed by Haredi men from conscription into the military under a ruling by the Supreme Court, but the education budget has also caused problems.

“The Haredi parties feel that the extreme right secured all of its demands from the government and Ben-Gvir gets whatever he wants from the Prime Minister, while they are failing,” said Gilad Malach, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s ultra-Orthodox programme.

With Netanyahu’s government likely to face a reckoning at the polls over the security failures that allowed the 7 October cross-border attack by Hamas from Gaza to happen, none of the parties have shown any real inclination to walk out.

But, even so, such tensions contain the seeds of future problems, Malach said. “It might begin a process that all parties don’t want right now but that might be the result.”

READ: Israel police arrest ultra-Orthodox Jews at anti-conscription protest