A request was made on Sunday by Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik to meet with Rav Ovadia Yosef Shlita, but aides to the Rav replied “he is asleep.”

The meeting between Premier-designate Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres was scheduled for 5:30pm. Mr. Peres requested to move the meeting up to 2:30pm, to which Livni agreed. A short time before the scheduled meeting, Speaker Itzik requested that Mr. Peres move it back to 5:30pm to permit her a 3-hour window for a last effort towards moving ahead with a coalition. Mr. Peres and Livni agreed. It was then that Itzik attempted to meet with Rav Ovadia Yosef in the hope of persuading him to approve Shas’ entry into a Livni-led coalition.

Shas officials explain that Itzik simply does not understand that a decision from the Council of Torah Sages is a “p’sak halacha which cannot be amended.”

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)