With the draft bill on its way, the moment of truth is here

T

he excuses and the spins, the stalling and the smokescreens are all used up. We’ve arrived at the money time, after which there will be no more patchwork or touch-ups. The Draft Law has officially landed on the table of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and within days we’ll know whether the bill passes and extends the government’s shelf life — or collapses and triggers its downfall.

The road to approval was anything but smooth, and even after the chareidi answer was delivered, question marks still hovered. Even after a principled chareidi “yes” was relayed directly to Netanyahu, the PM’s circle continued emitting discontented murmurs. The Prime Minister’s Office initially explained that the chareidim hadn’t done “full-fledged teshuvah,” so the PM couldn’t bring the hammer down on rebellious Likud MKs.

“In all honesty, we’re swamped,” one senior aide told me, ticking off the list. “The internal Likud convention elections, the tug-of-war between the chief of staff and the defense minister, the elimination of Hezbollah’s chief of staff in Lebanon, the Gaza crisis, the ongoing drama every night with Washington, and the exhausting preparation for the court testimony.”

The chareidi response was swift: Netanyahu was told that the minimum approved by the rabbanim is also the maximum that can be accepted. “Anything beyond what the rabbanim permitted — with unprecedented draft quotas that we’re agreeing to vote positively for — simply can’t be expected,” was the message. Netanyahu listened — and acquiesced.

To his credit, once the green light came from both Shas and Degel HaTorah, Bibi switched into action mode. In his eyes, the draft crisis is the last major obstacle between him and finishing his term — and he’s treating it accordingly.

Applying the pressure on the Likud MKs, Netanyahu waited for the day after the internal party convention — the first in 14 years. The internal battles drained every ounce of energy from the Likud rank and file, creating strange bedfellows out of sworn rivals. As the polls opened, the party’s whole focus was the infighting.

But even here, there was good news: Ministers Zohar and Karhi, and MK Amit Halevi, who all rose in power, are among the most outspoken Likud supporters of the chareidim. “Protecting Torah learners is no less important to me than protecting the army,” Minister Miki Zohar told me the day after his victory.

Fast Track

The chareidim expect Netanyahu, through Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth, to shift into high gear. After the bill was placed on the committee table last Thursday, Bismuth was tasked with moving it forward this week and holding a quick vote. The end goal: passing the bill in second and third readings before the end of this coming month — no extensions.

But even passage of fast-tracked legislation — if it happens — will only mark the beginning of a long legal saga. The great unknown, which will become clear only when the bill reaches the vote, is the position of the committee’s legal advisor, Miri Frankel-Shor. If she limits herself to verbal criticism, without issuing a written legal opinion that categorically disqualifies major clauses, then Knesset legal advisor Sagit Afik may later be able to defend the law before the High Court.

Legal backing from inside the Knesset could prove critical once the inevitable multiple petitions reach the High Court, almost certainly accompanied by demands for an immediate injunction freezing the law’s implementation. Without at least a thin layer of internal legal protection, the odds of the law surviving — even temporarily, just to buy precious time — are slim. The precedent path was paved long ago by Rav Aharon Leib Steinman ztz”l, from the era of the Tal Law, which the Court eventually struck down after years of shielding Torah learners.

Chareidi officials speak about “general understandings” with the Knesset’s legal advisors, but too many times, those understandings have shattered on the rocks of reality. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, under continuous attack and labeled by cabinet ministers as the “outlaw AG,” continues demanding stricter enforcement from Netanyahu.

And the more her name appears in controversial headlines, the more she’ll attempt to tear the law to shreds to gain public favor. The latest revelation — her alleged attempt to block the IDF chief from transferring the Military Advocate General’s investigative findings to the police Lahav unit — has turned the AG into a wounded animal.

Despite her weakened position — or perhaps because of it — it’s hard to imagine the Knesset’s legal advisors facing her head-on and going all the way. Excuses won’t be lacking — but this is the moment of truth. If the law doesn’t pass all three readings within the coming month, this government won’t be bringing the chareidim any salvations.

Plea or Bargain?

If it wasn’t yet clear, this week sealed it: Netanyahu’s first pardon request was actually sent on November 12 — via President Donald Trump. And if anyone still doubted the pre-coordination, Netanyahu’s official request this week proved that the whole dance had been choreographed from the start.

This Sunday, Netanyahu submitted a pardon request to President Isaac Herzog, and the political system instantly snapped into formation — left, right, and everything in between — in that familiar reflex that has defined Israeli politics for over a decade.

Except this isn’t really a pardon request — it’s a petition for acquittal.

In the letter accompanying the request to President Herzog, Netanyahu avoided even mentioning the word pardon. In the detailed memo attached, he explains his logic: a pardon would “heal the rifts among the nation,” strengthen Israel’s resilience in light of the extraordinary developments expected in the Middle East, and allow the prime minister to re-engage with the legal system and the media — arenas from which he is barred during his trial.

Basic Law: The President states that one of the president’s few actual executive powers — in a role otherwise symbolic — is the ability to grant pardons to offenders. The catch? Netanyahu was never convicted. And his letter contains not even a hint of admission — quite the opposite. He stresses explicitly, both in writing and in a video statement, that his personal interest is to continue the trial and achieve total exoneration. But he is ready, he says, “to place the public interest above his own.” All, as always, for the sake of the state.

Israel has a precedent for granting a pardon before conviction: President Chaim Herzog, the sixth president, father of the current one, whose name resurfaced in Ireland this week in a controversy over renaming a park honoring him. In the Kav 300 affair, President Herzog pardoned Shin Bet agents accused of killing captured terrorists and covering it up — before conviction. But then, the recipients of the pardon admitted guilt. That’s not the case now. Netanyahu is tying the pardon to his continued service as prime minister and to the missions awaiting him — both at home and on the world stage.

One would assume Netanyahu would not have embarked on this path unless he believed Herzog might actually grant the request, rather than toss it down the steps of the President’s Residence.

President Herzog has walked between the raindrops since the day he was elected. The left accuses him of cowardice, calling him the guardian of a “United Netanyahu” — a twist on the slip of the tongue that torpedoed his 2015 run against Netanyahu as head of the Labor Party. The right sees him as someone constantly winking at his base, eager to return home — not to the Jerusalem presidential mansion but to his spacious house in Tel Aviv’s tony Tzahala neighborhood.

From the day Herzog was elected — with Netanyahu’s support — whispers circulated about a secret pardon deal, denied by both sides. Time will tell whether Herzog, once the last Labor leader viewed as a viable challenger to Netanyahu, will now be the one to cement Bibi in power — this time without the legal hump on his back — in the name of “healing society” and “the good of the state.”

Even if Herzog approves the request — the odds of which seem remote — the move will face a legal obstacle course. In the Kav 300 case, the High Court approved the pardon by majority, over the dissent of Justice Aharon Barak, who later became the all-powerful chief justice and architect of the judicial revolution. Barak argued that under the law, the president can grant pardons only to those already convicted. It’s not hard to guess how today’s High Court might rule — especially with the panel selected by Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit, who makes Barak look conservative at times.

The very filing of the pardon request is seismic. It shifts the national conversation and may even smooth the passage of the Draft Law in the coming weeks — if the headlines focus on the pardon rather than on the chareidi draft.

But as with the draft saga, so with the pardon and every other core issue: In today’s Israel, the judges hold all the cards in the country’s monopoly deck.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1089)