United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler will be appointed deputy communications minister in a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent the MK from voting against the government’s draft regulation bill for yeshiva students.

Ministers are expected to approve the appointment Thursday in a telephone vote, a spokesperson for Eichler told the Times of Israel.

Under the agreement, Eichler, who is a member of UTJ party leader Yitzhak Goldknopf’s Agudat Yisrael faction, which opposes the current draft law, will resign from the Knesset and be appointed to the cabinet.

This will allow Yitzhak Pindrus, a former UTJ Knesset member from MK Moshe Gafni’s Degel Hatorah faction, which supports the bill in its current form, to reenter the Knesset and vote in support of the measure.

Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah are the two factions that make up the United Torah Judaism party.

Pindrus was one of three UTJ MKs pushed out of the Knesset in July under the Norwegian Law, following the resignations of the party’s ministers when UTJ quit the government over the failure to pass a draft regulation bill that would largely continue the exemption of the Haredi community.

That led Agudat Yisrael to hold four seats within the Knesset while Degel Hatorah had only three, causing tensions within the party over faction control. The new arrangement is a compromise that restores balance between the two.

More significantly, it........

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