If there is no draft law, there is no coalition - haredi minister

If the draft law isn't passed in the Knesset's winter session, the government may be at risk of collapsing, Construction and Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the reform legislation will be frozen until the draft law is passed, he added.

The comment was made amid division plaguing the coalition this week on whether or not they should agree to a judicial reform compromise after an outline was leaked on Monday.

The ultra-Orthodox parties, however, have largely remained outside of the debate as their focus continues to rest on the draft law which they have been trying to pass since the government was sworn in earlier this year.

Nothing else will pass until the draft law passes

Goldknopf lamented not forcing the coalition to pass the bill while it was working the Deri Law (a law that would allow the Shas leader to be a minister despite being disqualified by the High Court) and the Ben-Gvir Law (which expands the national security minister's authority over Israel Police).

"Israel's leaders agreed that with the budget, the bill would pass. But when the budget came," they pushed it off again, he said.

The budget was passed at the last second, and if it hadn't passed by the deadline, Israel would have gone back to elections.

However, the bill was once again pushed off during the Knesset summer session, and now the haredi parties are demanding that it be passed in the winter session which starts next month.

"There's a commitment from the Likud to us that nothing else will pass until the draft law," said Goldknopf, adding that he had a signed guarantee of this promise.

Meanwhile, an outline has yet to be agreed on as the IDF and the ultra-Orthodox parties try to find the balance between fulfilling the IDF's needs and satisfying the haredi needs with one of the demands from the ultra-Orthodox parties being to have a clause in the new law that would prevent the High Court of Justice from striking it down.

The urgency to pass the bill comes as the draft law that was already in place expired at the end of June. An extension until March of this year is currently keeping yeshiva students from being drafted, but that can change if a new law isn't passed by then.