Yisrael Beiteinu opposes civil marriage bill in about-face

After the Yisrael Beiteinu party regularly declared during the last Knesset election campaign that it would work to pass legislation allowing for civil marriage in Israel, yesterday, one after another, the party's MKs voted against such a bill. The civil marriage bill, sponsored by Kadima MKs Shlomo Molla and Robert Tibayev, was brought to a voice vote on a preliminary reading; it was voted down by 63 MKs, with 38 in favor. Currently, marriage in Israel is only performed by religious authorities and there is no provision for the intermarriage of Jewish Israelis and those Israelis not recognized as Jewish under halakha, Jewish religious law.

Sources in Yisrael Beiteinu said that, through the bill, Kadima had attempted to embarrass their party - after the coalition agreement with Likud barred them from debating the issue of civil marriage until a special committee to consider the matter was established. The sources said Kadima had attempted to scuttle similar legislation in 2006 and 2008, which would have provided for civil marriage.

The opposition from Yisrael Beiteinu and the other parties in the governing coalition aroused a storm of controversy in the Knesset. Tibayev, for one, called the Knesset members from Yisrael Beiteinu "rags" and compared the party to the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and its spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Referring to Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, Tibayev said, "It is not 'Rabbi' Lieberman who is running the party but Rabbi Ovadia Yosef," implying that Lieberman's party ultimately bent to the wishes of its Shas coalition partner.

On behalf of the government, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman had urged MKs to defeat the bill. "In the context of coalition agreements, it was agreed that that a government bill providing for state recognition of non-Jewish couples in the covenant of marriage would be promoted. The matter can be advanced in the context of debate and agreement, not through a war," he said.

In response, Kadima MK Roni Bar-On said the justice minister had become the "prosecutor of coalition agreements."

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, the executive director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, which represents the Reform Jewish movement in the country, rejected any government civil marriage bill which would only provide for marriages among non-Jews.

MK Molla, co-sponsor of the recent bill, said "The public no longer believes the politicians as a result of empty slogans." When they get elected to the Knesset, he said, they don't keep their promises. When asked why he had opposed the same bill when it was proposed in the last Knesset, Molla said: "I made a mistake and now we must correct that mistake. I opposed the bill before because I was a new Knesset member."