Shas Party Chairman Aryeh Deri sent personal text messages to all of his faction’s Knesset members at the end of August, forbidding them to be interviewed or to make any statements on major issues on the party's behalf. Obviously, Deri did not skip his predecessor, current Knesset member and former Minister Eli Yishai. He made it clear to Yishai that any statements not coordinated with him first cause serious damage to the party as a whole.
These text messages came in the wake of Yishai’s comments to the media that he opposed the Shas Party joining the Netanyahu government. Yishai and Deri have been bitter rivals for the past few years. These comments were made while Deri was going out of his way to commend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of Operation Protective Edge. His praises gave the impression that he was looking to join the government.
Having been humiliated by Deri on numerous occasions since the death of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Oct. 7, 2013, Yishai must have read the message and chuckled to himself. He gave his answer to Deri on Aug. 31, in a comprehensive interview with Israeli Channel 7 radio. Yishai spoke freely about a series of issues on the public agenda, and reiterated his opposition to join the government. By doing so, he made it clear to the current head of the Shas Party, in the most public manner possible, that he does not consider himself subject to Deri’s authority. Even more importantly, he did it in the most public way imaginable.
The feud within the Shas Party leadership, between Deri and Yishai, which surfaced again over the past few days, is just a symptom of the party’s state less than a year after Yosef's death. Recent polls show Shas getting weaker; so if elections were held today, it would win an estimated seven seats, as opposed to the 11 seats it has today. At the same time, Yahadut HaTorah, the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party, would actually grow bigger than Shas. While it would only have a one-seat advantage, this could signify a dramatic reversal of the trend until now.
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