Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday reportedly dared the Haredi parties to dissolve the Knesset, declaring that if they cannot support the 2026 state budget, Israel should hold early elections.
Speaking with the Ynet news site, a source close to Smotrich said that the far-right politician was “no longer willing to link the budget law to the [ultra-Orthodox] draft law.”
“If they are not willing, then they should bring a law to dissolve the Knesset,” the source stated, adding that “there is a country here to manage. If we don’t want to vote on a budget, we will go to elections.”
According to Channel 12, Smotrich sent a similar message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring that if the budget didn’t pass its first reading on Monday the Knesset should be dissolved.
Earlier in the day, a spokeswoman for coalition whip Ofir Katz announced in a statement, without providing any reason, that Monday evening’s planned first reading of the budget bill had been postponed until Wednesday.
Sources in the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties told The Times of Israel that the delay was related to the ongoing fight over legislation exempting yeshiva students from military service. Smotrich was meeting Monday afternoon with Netanyahu along with Shas chairman Aryeh Deri and Degel HaTorah leader Moshe Gafni to discuss the matter.
The delay placed additional pressure on Netanyahu’s coalition, which must begin votes on the budget this week in order to meet a legally mandated March 31 deadline. Under Israeli law, if the government fails to pass the budget by the end of March, the Knesset will automatically dissolve, triggering early elections three months later. Elections are currently slated to be held by late October.
Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik informed lawmakers last Sunday that a first reading of the budget must be held by this week because at least two months must pass between the first and second readings of the budget, the latter of which must be held by the end of March.
One senior UTJ source said, without elaborating, that there were “difficult problems with the law.” Another source told The Times of Israel that the delay was the result of a demand by the party’s Degel HaTorah faction, which has generally supported the bill. While a spokesman for Gafni did confirm that the two issues are connected, he did not reply to a request for elaboration.
Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee currently debating the bill, said that the Haredim were “not satisfied with the dialogue with the [committee’s] legal adviser and demand to see her approve the law.”
“Otherwise, they will not vote in favor and [will] go to the polls,” he added.
Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The Israel Defense Forces has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.
For the past two years, the Haredi leadership has pushed for a law keeping its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal. Since then, coalition lawmakers, dependent on Haredi support to keep them in government, have struggled to find a formulation that could win ultra-Orthodox backing while also meeting demands for the community to share in the burden of mandatory military service.
The latest version of the bill, which would enshrine continued exemptions for full-time yeshiva students, has come under fire from IDF brass, the attorney general, and a wide array of other critics, who have objected to it on the grounds that it is full of loopholes and will not increase Haredi enlistment.
Committee legal adviser Miri Frenkel Shor, who has also expressed significant criticism of the bill, has called for the addition of several amendments to the legislation that are opposed by the Haredim, Maariv reported. Late-night discussions of the issues on Sunday had failed to bring about an agreement, leading to the delay on the budget vote.
Frenkel Shor has previously warned that the bill violates equality principles and fails to meet current security needs. She has also called to reexamine a clause ending sanctions at age 26 and argued that by effectively resetting the status of yeshiva students who ignored call-up orders over the past year, the legislation would grant legal immunity to Haredim but not to non-Haredi evaders.
According to the Haredi press, one of the key sticking points is Frenkel Shor’s opposition to a clause in the bill allowing an advisory committee to lower recruitment targets should its members feel that insufficient Haredi-oriented tracks have been established in the IDF.
Despite previously declaring that they would not support the 2026 state budget until the coalition passes its controversial bill, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and the Degel HaTorah faction of UTJ both indicated last week that they planned to vote in favor of the budget in its first reading.
According to Channel 12, following a first reading of the budget bill, the two Haredi parties were planning to withhold their support for further votes on the budget until the IDF exemption bill’s legislative process was completed.
“The reason the budget is not up for a vote today is that the Haredim have realized that the evasion law will not pass. We will not let it pass,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declared in a video statement following Katz’s announcement.
Ultra-Orthodox politicians appear to be growing increasingly doubtful about the conscription bill’s chances of passing.
According to the Haredi news site Emess, Shas chairman Deri last week expressed doubt that Netanyahu’s coalition would actually bring the IDF draft bill for its second and third readings in the Knesset before the budget is passed.
During their weekly faction meeting last Monday, Deri reportedly predicted to the MKs of his party that they would “vote in favor of the first reading [of the budget] and then in the end there will be no [conscription regulation] law and they will tell us to come and pass a budget and then [they will] dissolve the Knesset [anyway].”
“In my opinion, that’s where we are going,” Deri reportedly said, slamming Netanyahu’s Likud party for not pushing harder for the IDF bill.
