Versions struggle between Lapid and Deri: Collaboration or bureaucratic problem?

Versions struggle between Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Shas Chairman MK Aryeh Deri: Yesterday evening (Monday), Deri announced that he reached an agreement with the Minister of Finance and Minister of Education Shay Piron and brought about the annulment of the planned cuts on the Maayan education network and Chinuch Atzmai educational institutions. He issued a statement saying: "removing of the cuts by the Minister of Finance, is the beginning of the dialogue which is very important and necessary at this time for all of us."

But this morning Lapid denies that the cancellation stemmed from a summary between him and Deri. In a detailed post on his Facebook page he lists the sequence of events and claims that the cancellation was not due to any bureaucratic problem: "The Minister of Education, Shay Piron, approached me and said there was a problem with abolition of Regulation 3-9 - A, which gave full budgeting to the Maayan Shas educational network. I asked what the problem was; Shay explained that until we do not formally establish a Haredi national educational network, we are actually cancelling their budget without offering any alternative. We had a brief discussion and at the end we agreed it will be postponed until we uninstall a new network.

"Before I went into my room I said to Shay, you know what, if it's being postponed, call Deri and tell him. There is no reason he should hear it from someone else. I forgot who I was dealing with. A couple of hours passed until the end of the next session, Deri walked around the world and sold to the media that we surrendered to him and decided to cancel the cuts on Maayan."

According to Lapid, "Not only is it an obvious lie, he also prevented that we will ever try to cooperate with him on issues important to his people."

Education Minister meets with Deri regarding the cancellation of the cuts

Lapid's post raises puzzling since yesterday the men of the education minister from his party, Shay Piron, to put in publications put the work of the latter in elimination: in the budget proposal, he country's support should have been decreased by 25% and is also dependent on international achievement tests. Technically he created a problem in operating these clauses now, as the process of establishing a national Haredi network was not yet made in practice. Ministry formulates steps towards the construction of such a network, and taking funds from institutions which exist while no change in institutions is unnecessary and perhaps even pointless.

In fact who was deeply involved here in the cancellation of cuts is Finance Minister Lapid, but Rabbi Piron. Aryeh Deri wanted to hurry and pick talks of cancellation issued a press release about it, without marking the Minister of Education. His men were called and it was repaired.

Along with this no sources surrounding Minister Piron have any problem to give credit Deri, who met recently with the Minister many times and no doubt these meetings contributed to the final step.

In an interview with the media Minister Piron stated: "This is a historic evening. Haredi schools will be subject to tests of GEMS and core studies to gain funding. Those who do not accept conditions will not be funded. We will establish a network of public schools for the Orthodox, to produce an alternative. Overall, for the first time the Orthodox accepts the terms in the education system."

In general, the approach of Shas over recent weeks was to attack less and still get achievements; compared to the approach of Yahadut Hatorah who attacked, at least initially, at the plenum. Recently they also stopped these attacks, perhaps with the understanding that the way of lobbying and dialogue can achieve more.

In fact we can assume also that the cancellation of cuts is tied to Yitzchak Ravitz's expected entry as adviser to Education Minister Rabbi Shay Piron.

No doubt the income of the ultra-Orthodox contact to the job in the office of the Minister Piron is part of confidence-building measures; the decision tonight is part of them. On the other hand it may be that the annulment of cuts may lie in the acceptance of the ultra-Orthodox parties to establish a national Orthodox education network.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!