Aryeh Deri

Few politicians have stayed at the center of the Israeli arena as long as Aryeh Deri, and on JudgeMarket the public's verdict on him reflects decades of influence. A co-founder of Shas who was appointed interior minister at just 29, he built one of the most cohesive voting blocs in the country — a traditional Mizrahi and Haredi public that sees him as the man who brought it to the cabinet table — and time after time made his party the kingmaker in coalition-building. Against that stands a heavy legal record: a 1999 bribery conviction for which he served a prison sentence, a 2022 plea deal on tax offenses, and a High Court ruling in January 2023, by a majority of ten justices to one, that his appointment as a minister was extremely unreasonable, which led to his removal from the government. To his supporters this is persecution by institutions that never accepted him; to his opponents, reason enough to disqualify him from leadership. The verdict on him is polarized, not lukewarm. In July 2025 the Shas ministers quit the government over the delay in the conscription law, but the party stayed in the coalition, and ahead of the October 27 election it is making its entry into the next government conditional on settling the status of yeshiva students — an issue that, in the shadow of the war and the heavy reserve-duty burden, is fiercely contested outside the Haredi sector. His standing is being tested within his own camp as well: after a rift with Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef reported in August 2026, a reconciliation was reached that gave the rabbi greater influence over party decisions, and according to a report in Haaretz, the Council of Torah Sages even blocked his attempt to remove a member of the Knesset from the list. His fortunes are bound up with the survival of the bloc led by Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Shas's seats are vital; a return to a senior government post would be the clearest test of whether the public is ready to give him a fresh start.