Shas chairman Aryeh Deri said he expects legislation exempting yeshiva students from military service to advance when the Knesset returns from recess this summer, asserting in a pre-Pesach interview that the bill already has the votes to pass.

“The draft of the conscription law is ready,” Deri told the Shas-affiliated outlet Haderech. “If we had brought it to a vote in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, it would have passed. I believe it would have passed in the plenum as well.”

Deri said the bill was shelved at the direction of Chareidi rabbinic leadership after the outbreak of war with Iran, which he said made the timing inappropriate. “B’ezrat Hashem, we will settle the issue in the summer session,” he said.

His comments come amid shifting signals from the coalition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had both announced the controversial legislation was being set aside following the onset of hostilities. But on Monday evening, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, a Likud MK, told the Knesset that the bill would be reintroduced as part of a broader legislative package aimed at bolstering the IDF as it contends with fighting on multiple fronts.

The bill has faced sustained opposition from IDF leadership, the attorney general, and a broad range of critics, who argue it is riddled with loopholes, entrenches inequality in the mandatory draft, and will do little to address what the military describes as an urgent manpower shortage.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)