Rabbi Deri: I’ll Be Back

By Hamodia Staff

Shas leader Rabbi Aryeh Deri seen during a  party meeting this week. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

YERUSHALAYIM — Shas party leader Rabbi Aryeh Deri said on Thursday evening that he fully expects to return to serving as a minister in the government in the near future, in his first interviews with the news media since the High Court ruled that he could not continue as interior and health minister.

Rabbi Deri said that once the Knesset legislates new laws to enable his return, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and coalition officials have pledged, he’ll be back.

“It will happen… if it takes two weeks or a month or two months,” he said.

When asked what would happen if the High Court would strike down such a law, he answered: “I don’t know.”

He reiterated that he has no intention to leave government, because of his commitment to working toward “an enormous goal” to preserve the country’s Jewish identity and help its weakest citizens.

During the interviews, he disavowed a threat by one of the Shas MKs to bring down the government over Rabbi Deri’s removal, saying that it was said “out of the pain in his heart.”

Regarding the court’s ruling itself, he said “I was in shock at the astonishing lack of reasonableness, that after the elections they would take the ballots of 400,000 people [who voted for Shas] and throw them in the garbage.”

He also said that he never asked to be named as alternate prime minister as a way of staying in the government, which had been the subject of speculation in the media.

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