Israel’s Political Battle Over The Drafting Of Yeshiva Students
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s razor-thin coalition in the country’s 120-seat parliament may collapse on Wednesday if the Sephardic Shas party supports the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism party’s bill to dissolve the Knesset.
The two haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jews) parties, with 11 and seven members of Knesset, respectively, are irate that Netanyahu’s coalition has failed to enact legislation exempting some 150,000 yeshiva students from military service.
According to Israeli law, if a bill to disperse the Knesset passes, an election is automatically called and must be held within 90 days.
While the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s legal team has been working diligently to formulate new legislation, the drafting of such a proposed law could take weeks. With the Knesset’s summer session ending in July, there may not be enough time for the bill to be enacted. Thus, the current draft law, which requires that all eligible men serve in the Israel Defense Force, will be in effect at least until October.
Many secular and modern Orthodox Israeli Jews are outraged that while the war in Gaza has been raging since Oct. 7, 2023 and they have suffered many casualties and interruptions to their civilian life in response to repeated reserve duty call-ups, their able-bodied ultra-Orthodox fellow citizens have not shared the defense burden.
The IDF told lawmakers it faces a critical manpower shortage, needing approximately 12,000 new recruits, including 7,000 combat soldiers and seeks to recruit 4,800 Haredi men annually, a figure expected to rise over time.
The contentious issue of compulsory military service for all citizens dates back to the Jewish State’s founding in 1948. In October of that year (after the dire military situation during the initial months of Israel’s War of Independence had passed and Holocaust survivors immediately drafted into the army) the country’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion approved a request from the Agudat Yisrael party to exempt 400 haredi yeshiva students.
At the time, no more than several hundred men were studying in the seminaries, and the exemption was seen as a symbolic gesture toward Jewish continuity after the massacre of tens of thousands of Talmud students during the Holocaust.
However, the ultra-Orthodox population has grown exponentially since Israel’s founding. In January 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Haredim are Israel’s fastest-growing community and projected it would constitute 16% of the population by the end of the decade.
What happens next?
Come next month, the IDF will issue 54,000 conscription orders to haredi seminarians who were 18 or older in February 2024, said the head of the army’s Personnel Directorate Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa.
Riots broke out on June 5 when yeshiva students blocking an expressway near the haredi city of Bnei Brak east of Tel Aviv clashed with police. The students were protesting the arrest of a haredi draft-dodger attempting to leave the country. Meir Borochov, 20, was sentenced to three weeks in a military lock-up after his arrest at Ben-Gurion Airport on the eve of the Shavuot festival.
At the same time, Netanyahu concluded emergency talks last week with Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein in a last-minute effort to keep the coalition from collapsing over the military conscription logjam.
The crisis hadescalated when spiritual leaders of Degel HaTorah, a faction within the UTJ, instructed their MKs to introduce legislation dissolving parliament after last-ditch negotiations with Edelstein failed. Shas, the other major haredi party, quickly followed suit, with party leader Aryeh Deri stating in an internal meeting that Shas also supports dissolving the Knesset.
Following Netanyahu’s meeting with Edelstein, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that “it was clarified that there is a way to bridge the gaps on the issue of conscription” — offering a glimmer of hope amid escalating threats from haredi parties to dissolve the Knesset.
“A law without effective personal sanctions, high draft targets and a high rate of increase — is not draft but evasion, and I have opposed this all along,” Edelstein posted on X.
In addition to the long-standing exemption for yeshiva students, haredim have also enjoyed from extensive and expensive benefits, including property tax discounts, tax credits, rental assistance and academic subsidies. Other punitive measures for those not serving in the IDF could also prevent those individuals from obtaining a driver’s license, leaving the country or receiving public transportation discounts.
Adding to the political drama, prominent haredi Rabbis Dov Lando and Moshe Hirsch, refused to meet with Netanyahu Wednesday, declaring “there is no point in further talks.” However, Edelstein remained steadfast in his position.
“As the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee who is exposed to the security challenges facing us, I say with all my heart: We must not stop the work on the various fronts and engage in politics,” he said. “The order of the hour is to promote an effective and genuine conscription law. After 77 years, we can make history.”
Further complicating the government’s chance for survival, opposition parties have seized on the coalition’s instability, with Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and the Democrats announcing they will submit a bill for the Knesset’s dissolution next Wednesday. But even if it passes preliminary readings, the process requires four separate votes, potentially giving Netanyahu weeks to negotiate a compromise before the Knesset’s summer recess.
Gil Zohar was born in Toronto and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.