Closed Dossier: The Math Survives The Vote

Stop asking if the upcoming election will finally break Haredi power — it won't. Start asking which coalition members will get to control the ministries closest to your interests.

Rabbi Lando dissolved the coalition over a haredi draft fix Netanyahu has no mechanism to deliver — the bill that survives the High Court is the one he cannot pass, and the bill he can pass will not survive. So the election will happen, and the math will not move. The diaspora has spent thirty years watching the wrong dial, asking whether the public will finally throw the bums out. The question that actually touches conversion, marriage, the Kotel, and Who Is A Jew runs through coalition portfolios — and the answers will be the appendices to an agreement signed in October.

The election picks the bloc that gets to negotiate. The agreement decides the answers all of us actually must live with.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.