AM:PM store in Israel. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The controversial, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) backed Minimarket Law, which could bar more stores from opening on Shabbat, passed Tuesday morning with a one-vote margin after an all-night debate.
The law states that any municipality that wants to pass a new local law allowing stores to open on Saturdays must receive the interior minister’s approval, which Shas chairman Arye Deri, the current minister, does not plan to give, though future ministers might. Gas station convenience stores were excepted from the law.
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The Minimarket Law does not create new enforcement options against the many shops that open illegally on Shabbat and pay municipal fines.
As expected, Yisrael Beytenu voted against the bill and MKs Sharren Haskel of Likud and Tali Ploskov of Kulanu skipped the vote, despite being in the coalition, while Bayit Yehudi MK Motti Yogev, in the coalition, and Zionist Union lawmaker Yossi Yona, in the opposition, were absent due to death in the family.
The legislation is part of a compromise Netanyahu made to appease the Haredi Shas and UTJ parties, after they took umbrage at what they saw as an uptick in public violations of the Sabbath and then-health minister Ya’acov Litzman resigned from his post.
Deri then pushed forward the Minimarkets Law, in what many saw as a way to enhance his image as a protector of Shabbat, after Litzman one-upped him.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Likud faction meeting if the bill were voted down, it had the potential to destabilize the coalition.
The all-night plenum meeting was stopped for three hours, because of the coalition’s narrow majority. The Knesset approved a change suggested by Zionist Union MK Itzik Shmuly, which excepted kitchenware stores from the law, after the Knesset computers did not display votes by Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant and Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan, who said they voted against it.
The bill was returned to the Knesset Interior Committee, which voted down the change, and the legislation was brought back to the plenum in its original version, with the newly-added gas station exemption.
Coalition chairman David Amsalem (Likud) defended the bill, pointing out that “in the last year the Supreme Court interpreted the law to greatly reduce the Interior Minister’s authority to intervene in local laws, in their ruling on the Tel Aviv local law about opening and closing businesses on the day of rest.”
The law states the Interior Minister to approve local laws that keep stores that meet basic, necessary needs, Amsalem said.
Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovsky explained to her fellow coalition members why she felt the bill was wrong, focusing on the Likud, where some MKs and ministers voiced reservations about it.
“The Likud is not a haredi party. The Likud is a liberal party. The Likud is a party that knows how to be open, accepting, embracing, bridging and connecting,” Malinovsky said. “What do we see here now? That the Likud is Shas number two. That’s how we feel.”
Malinovsky added that, historically, Likud’s leaders “did not put the sacred over liberty. It was balanced. Live and let live. Respect and get respect. They didn’t enter others’ homes. They didn’t do religious coercion. They didn’t force their values on people.”
Yesh Atid faction chairman Ofer Shelah accused Netanyahu of “fawning” over top UTJ MKs Litzman and Moshe Gafni after the accidental change to the bill, “so they will agree to give up on three meaningless words in the Minimarket law, and they’re refusing. Not because they care about kitchenware being exempted from the bill, but because they know what the victory photo will look like: the Prime Minister begging and ingratiating himself, and his masters saying ‘no.’”
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) pointed to the extensive, weeks-long disputes within the coalition about the bill, saying that the government is falling apart.
“Each party making up the coalition is only busy with self-preservation, non-stop signaling to its political base and totally forgetting the point of” being in the Knesset, Herzog said.
“How did we get to the point where our wonderful Shabbat, which everyone lives as they like, because a point of contention in the Knesset?” he asked.