Shas leader Aryeh Deri quits the Knesset after his party's election drubbing — but stays on as chairman

Aryeh Deri, the longtime leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and a key ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, announced Sunday that he will not serve in the newly elected Knesset after Shas fell from 11 seats to six, its weakest result in more than two decades, Ynet reported.

Deri will remain chairman of Shas. He said the party's Council of Torah Sages, which last week rejected his bid to resign as leader, had approved his request to give up his Knesset seat "in favor of younger representatives who have already proven themselves in parliamentary work."

"Last week, the revered rabbis of the Council of Torah Sages instructed me to continue serving as chairman of the Shas movement," Deri said. "I accepted their instruction without question." He said he would tour the country to rebuild grassroots support while still convening the party's weekly faction meetings, guiding its lawmakers and overseeing committee work.

Two other candidates on the Shas list, Moshe Abutbul and Dror Amos, a reserve IDF officer recruited to broaden the party's appeal on the conscription issue, also withdrew. That clears the way for Uriel Buso and Yosef Taieb to enter the Knesset. The six Shas lawmakers scheduled to be sworn in Tuesday are Yinon Azoulay, Michael Malkieli, Yoav Ben-Tzur, Haim Biton, Uriel Buso and Yosef Taieb.

Deri's announcement comes hours after President Isaac Herzog formally tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming the next government. Shas on Saturday night dismissed reports it might join an Eisenkot-led coalition as "complete fake news," saying the Council of Torah Sages had instructed the party to remain part of the right-wing bloc.

Deri cannot serve as a minister because of past criminal convictions. He said he had never seen a campaign of comparable difficulty and blamed "incitement against us over the past three years, from within and without."