You can’t say that Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman’s move to end daycare subsidies for yeshiva students was unexpected or that he didn’t give fair warning. His position on reducing government expenditures on subsidies and other benefits for the ultra-Orthodox was one of the main reasons Liberman didn’t join the right-wing coalition that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered him with the ultra-Orthodox parties during the two years of political crisis in Israel, even though on foreign policy he is on the extreme right of the map.
Throughout the last election, Liberman insisted that the ultra-Orthodox must enter the workforce, military or national service, putting the issue at the center of his economic platform. He was the one who blocked any possibility of the ultra-Orthodox joining the current coalition.
