The ultra-Orthodox Shas party, whose ministers resigned from the government last week over the Haredi conscription issue, is said to be attempting to maintain de facto control over the ministries it headed until now.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, the party is opposed to Tourism Minister Haim Katz (Likud) taking over its ministerial portfolios, as it fears he will oust Shas bureaucrats.

Katz has already been appointed acting housing minister following the resignation of Yitzhak Goldknopf of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

In the past, he was also given the portfolios of Otzma Yehudit ministers who resigned temporarily in protest of a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza back in January.

The outlet cites coalition sources as saying that the Shas ministers’ resignations are a sham and that in practice, “everything will stay the same” in the party’s former ministries as they are staffed by Shas-appointed advisers and directors general.

Shas held the interior, social welfare, religious services, health, and labor portfolios, as well as the deputy ministerial position in the Agriculture Ministry.

According to Kan, Shas’s portfolios are expected to be transferred to a minister from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

In addition to Katz, the ministers being considered to take on those portfolios are Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Education Minister Yoav Kisch, Kan says.

The Walla news site reported yesterday that Shas chair Aryeh Deri would prefer that the party’s portfolios be handed off to Levin.

“It will be very easy to work with him,” unnamed Shas sources told Walla. “If he promises something, he delivers on it. If the portfolios are with him, [we] can sleep peacefully.”

Meanwhile, Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Minister Meir Porush (UTJ) was said to be aiming for his portfolio to go to Karhi.

Hebrew media reports that Netanyahu is yet to reach a decision on the matter and has fielded many requests from Likud members seeking to take over the posts.

Some of the positions could also end up with the premier’s remaining coalition partners. Hebrew media reports last week indicated that National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party was demanding control of the housing and interior ministries, while Religious Zionism chair and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has demanded that his party appoint the new head of the Knesset Finance Committee.

Likud whip Ofir Katz took over the committee on Wednesday evening, following the resignation of United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni from the position on Monday in the wake of his party’s exit from the coalition.

Sam Sokol contributed to this report.

Amid claims by Hamas of unprecedented starvation in the Gaza Strip in recent days, a senior Israeli security official says that the military has not identified famine, but stresses that actions need to be taken to “stabilize the humanitarian situation.”

The official, speaking with reporters on condition of anonymity, acknowledges that recently there has been a significant drop in the amount of aid reaching civilians in the Strip, blaming United Nations bodies for not collecting and distributing the food and supplies.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli military and defense ministry body responsible for coordinating aid deliveries to Gaza, says that some 950 trucks worth of supplies are waiting to be collected by the UN from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings.

???? WATCH: 950 trucks worth of aid, currently waiting in Gaza❗️for international organizations to pick up and distribute to Gazan civilians. This is after Israel facilitated the aid entry into Gaza. pic.twitter.com/aQTR7Sryhs — LTC Nadav Shoshani (@LTC_Shoshani) July 22, 2025

The official says that the aid waiting at the crossings for collection alone is enough to supply the Strip’s food needs for two and a half weeks.

“We have not identified starvation at this current point in time, but we understand that an action is required to stabilize the humanitarian situation,” the official says, adding that there may be difficulties with accessibility to food in some areas.

The official says that COGAT has sat down with the UN to try and work out the deliveries of the mounting aid that has been allowed into Gaza but not distributed.

The official says there are no issues with the aid reaching the crossings and entering Gaza, but the main bottleneck is the distribution itself. During the recent meetings, the official says it was agreed that the UN would distribute 70-80 trucks today, but in practice only 30 were taken in.

The UN has repeatedly claimed that COGAT has refused their requests for collection and distribution authorization, and that dangerous and complex conditions inside Gaza made aid distribution very difficult.

According to the UN, Israel’s restrictions and permit rejections are the reason for the mounting stockpiles of aid at the crossings, as aid organizations are regularly barred from transferring aid to warehouses and distribution sites. Convoys that don’t coordinate their travel with Israeli authorities and obtain hard-to-obtain approvals come under deadly IDF fire.

The official says that the UN has made requests that COGAT cannot agree to with regard to the deliveries, such as demanding that Hamas police escort the convoys, or that they be allowed to bring in communication devices that Israel fears could end up in Hamas’s hands.

Regarding the famine claims, the official says that Hamas is taking advantage of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and carrying out a propaganda campaign as part of a pressure tactic amid the ongoing hostage negotiations: “This is a cynical and timed move aimed at creating international pressure on Israel,” the official says.

The official says Israel is able to determine that there is no widespread famine in Gaza based on how much aid is actually entering the Strip, along with speaking with Palestinians and other intelligence.

In the past two months, some 4,500 trucks of aid have entered Gaza, according to COGAT. Half of those trucks have headed to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution sites, while the other half were taken to warehouses belonging to the UN and other approved aid organizations. In the past month, an average of 71 trucks entered Gaza each day, COGAT says.

Still, the official says that nearly all of the aid trucks heading to the UN warehouses were looted by Gazan mobs, not Hamas.

Since the resumption of aid deliveries to Gaza on May 19, after a pause since March 2, Israel has established a new mechanism to prevent aid trucks from being taken over by Hamas, the official says.

The mechanism only allows for international aid bodies that are registered with Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry to bring aid into Gaza, after rigorous security checks at the crossings. The mechanism also places sanctions on aid groups and individuals who do not abide by Israel’s requirements.

The official says Hamas is trying to do everything it can to undermine the new aid mechanism, including the GHF distribution sites. International organizations have said that Israel’s refusal to name a viable alternative to Hamas has created a chaotic and desperate situation on the ground that has significantly marred aid distribution.

President Trump on Monday acknowledged starvation in Gaza after largely deflecting on the issue, even as world leaders and humanitarian organizations warned that more than 20 months of Israeli bombardment and aid restrictions had left nearly two million Palestinians in a hunger crisis.

Speaking to reporters in Scotland during a 75-minute question-and-answer session with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Mr. Trump offered a vague promise to open new food sites in Gaza but said nothing about how the United States would get the aid into the largely demolished enclave.

“We’re giving money and things,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he will tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to ensure that food gets to people who need it. “I want to make sure they get the food, every ounce of food.”

For Mr. Trump, who boasts about his transactional approach to deal-making on the world stage, the starvation unfolding in Gaza is a test of whether an America First foreign policy can confront one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century.

Addressing reporters in the Knesset following the United Torah Judaism’s exit from the coalition, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) draws a line in the sand regarding personal and institutional sanctions against draft dodgers while also appealing to the Haredi parties not to topple the government.

UTJ quit the coalition last night after being presented with a copy of a proposed enlistment bill prepared by Edelstein, which it argued violated the terms of a previous compromise agreed to by the two sides last month in an effort to prevent the Haredi parties from toppling the government ahead of the war with Iran. Fellow ultra-Orthodox party Shas is considering following suit later this week.

“Unfortunately,” Edelstein complains, “the representatives of the Haredi factions in the Knesset are not ready for the outline of the law that I have formulated.”

Rather than representing a surprise, the bill was “based on the principles that we have discussed throughout the legislative process and includes a number of essential sections on which compromise is not possible,” Edelstein says.

These include “effective personal sanctions, institutional sanctions if targets are not met, applying high recruitment targets, which will increase rapidly” and “effective oversight and enforcement mechanisms.”

“Without these, it would not be a conscription law, but a bluff law,” he adds, appealing to Haredi lawmakers not to “dismantle the right-wing government.”

Declining to share a copy of the updated bill itself, which has yet to be seen even by members of his own committee, Edelstein declared that he had insisted since the beginning of the legislative process that he would “only pass a good law that would meet the needs of the IDF and significantly ease the burden of reservists and the serving public.”

Arguing that he had repeatedly acted to thwart threats to the coalition over the conscription issue, Edelstein says that ahead of Israel’s war with Iran, he worked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to prevent the dissolution of the Knesset.”

“That evening, some of the clauses were agreed upon, but it was clear to everyone that the drafting work was not finished then. Since then, we have worked intensively, in consultation with the serving public, representatives of the Haredi public and IDF representatives, to complete the clauses and details of the law,” he states.

“Last night, I had a long meeting with the Prime Minister and representatives of the Haredi parties, and I presented to them the draft of the Conscription Law that I believe in, prepared and ready for submission,” he continues — calling the bill one that “meets the needs of the IDF” and ensures “that anyone who enters the army as a Haredi will be able to leave it as a Haredi.”

“The future of the country is not subject to political games at a time when the security challenges facing us are many and more existential than ever,” Edelstein continues. “The public will not forgive those who fail to rise to the occasion and unite for one common goal – the security and future of the State of Israel.”

According to a spokesman for UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, Edelstein’s bill failed to deliver on several key demands, including offering a full amnesty to yeshiva students who have already received enlistment orders. It also reportedly contained a clause requiring yeshiva students who receive exemptions to check in and out of their yeshivas using a fingerprint scanner.

Degel HaTorah faction chairman Moshe Gafni launches a full-throated attack on the national-religious community and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, charging that the national-religious have been “leading the war against Torah students.” He questions the political partnership with that community’s representatives and will the ruling Likud party.

In a lengthy interview with the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site, the veteran Haredi politician — whose United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party withdrew from the government this week — complains about those who insist that it is possible to combine military service with Torah study.

“But the ones who are leading the war against Torah students are the religious Zionists, they are the leaders of this, the ones who constantly keep saying, ‘We also study, we also have rabbis.’ I’m not telling them what to do, but they shouldn’t tell us what to do,” he declares, adding that “those who are leading the incitement against us… they are worse than the biggest haters of Torah scholars.”

In the interview, Gafni states that recent events constituted a “bill of divorce,” ruling out any partnership on any issue between United Torah Judaism and its erstwhile national-religious partners.

Asked how he can defend exempting all Haredi yeshiva students from military service when every day brings new reports of fallen soldiers in the ongoing war, Gafni insists that it is “thanks to Torah students that we exist,” something he admits is “really very difficult to explain during a war.”

Responding to a question about whether Haredim who are not learning Torah full-time should enlist, Gafni evades the question, stating that he is “not the defense minister. My role is to take care of those who study Torah,” because the Jewish state would not exist without them.

“All these people on the right who speak against yeshiva students are playing into the hands of the left,” he argues, claiming that proves “that this partnership with the right is a conditional partnership.”

In response, Smotrich tweets that Gafni should be ashamed of himself, recommending that he visit the military cemetery on Mount Herzl and “go visit the bereaved families” — as well as the national-religious hesder yeshivas and pre-military academies, which combine Torah study with military service.

Gafni also slams national religious politician Itamar Ben Gvir, the chairman of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, whom he accuses of violating Jewish law — a likely reference to his frequent visits to the Temple Mount, which Haredim consider forbidden.

“We are not friends of the parties we are partners with. We often bite our lips,” he says.

Beyond Smotrich and Ben Gvir, Gafni launches an attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud), the latter of whom is another representative of the national-religious community.

UTJ quit the coalition on Monday evening after Edelstein reportedly went back on an agreement to soften some of the harsh sanctions included in his proposed Haredi draft legislation.

UTJ’s big mistake on the enlistment issue, he said, was that it “agreed that the legal reform would come before the conscription law,” adding that Edelstein “simply lied.”

“He should have told us that he couldn’t pass this law. He misled us — that’s one issue. And the second is the prime minister. He bears responsibility because he is the head of the system. He did not lie to us about this matter, but he bears responsibility and he needs to fix it. He made an agreement with us in which the main issue was regulating the status of yeshiva students.”

Gafni says his party is telling Netanyahu that “you need to bring an [enlistment] law. If there is no law — we won’t continue with this partnership at all.”