Kadima to Leave Coalition After Conscription Talks Break Down
Shaul Mofaz Image by getty images
The Kadima party will likely leave Israel’s government coalition after negotiations with Likud over a universal draft bill broke down.
With the talks reportedly ending Tuesday morning, Kadima scheduled a faction meeting for the evening to discuss its future in the government coalition, according to Israeli media reports. It appears likely that Kadima will pull out of the coalition some 70 days after joining it.
On Tuesday, Kadima head Shaul Mofaz reportedly rejected a compromise offer from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would have drafted half of the age-appropriate haredi Orthodox men into the military and the other half into national service.
The parties have been meeting to find an alternative to the Tal Law, which grants military exemptions to haredi Orthodox Israeli men. In February, the Israeli Supreme Court declared the law to be unconstitutional and set Aug. 1 as the deadline for a new law to be passed.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Monday that he would extend the Knesset’s current session, and not send lawmakers on summer break as scheduled on July 25, until a conscription law that includes the haredi Orthodox is drafted
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
