Why are Israels religious parties suddenly so influential?

Israel’s religious political parties worked for months to pass new religious legislation requiring convenience stores and groceries to close on the Sabbath. Few pieces of proposed legislation have caused more problems for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his secular and centrist Likud party.

What’s known as the minimarkets law (or supermarkets bill) deadlocked the Knesset for weeks. Shas, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox party for Sephardic Jews, threatened to topple the government if these bills were not immediately passed. The Knesset finally passed the bill Jan. 9 by a one-point margin (a vote of 58 to 57), with many coalition members voting with the opposition against the bill.

Israel’s religious politicians weren’t always so divisive, so why start now? My research on the political behavior of Israel’s Jewish religious leaders suggests that these extreme religious bills are symptoms of the growing internal divisiveness and increasingly empowered “extreme” factions since the death of previous leaders.

The effort to prohibit more activities on the Sabbath is extremely unpopular among the Israeli public. This includes Likud voters, traditional voters who support Shas and large parts of the religious public. Opinion polls consistently show that the public wants to permit more — not fewer — activities on the Sabbath (like public transportation).

The current fiasco also comes on the heels of an earlier crisis over allowing infrastructure work on the Sabbath. On Nov. 25, Netanyahu refused to cave in to religious demands, and in response, Yaakov Litzman, head of United Torah Judaism, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox party for Ashkenazim, resigned from the government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/26/why-are-israels-religious-parties-suddenly-so-influential/