The IDF will send out over 50,000 draft orders to haredim (ultra-Orthodox) in the 2025-2026 draft year, which is set to begin on July 1, according to a summary of an oversight meeting chaired by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Thursday.
The meeting was part of a series held approximately once a month to monitor the government’s implementation of the High Court ruling from June 2024 that ended the legal exemption of haredim from IDF service.
The government has sent out draft orders to 24,000 out of the approximately 80,000 eligible haredi men, and in the coming draft year, it will send out orders to the rest of the group, known as the “pool,” of eligible draftees, according to the summary of the meeting.
In addition, the IDF is compiling a new plan to increase the effectiveness of sanctions and enforcement on haredim who ignored draft orders, according to the summary. The IDF will also shorten the enforcement process, such that it will be able to speed up its ability to use enforcement tools.
Baharav-Miara also reiterated a point from earlier meetings, that the government was not using all the tools at its disposal, which did not require legislation, to sanction draft dodgers.
The Prime Minister's Office announced on Friday morning that "significant progress has been made" regarding the haredi draft law, adding that "it was decided that an effort will be made to summarize the issues that remain open tomorrow."
This statement followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, former Minister Shas MK Ariel Attias, and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fox on the issue.
Anger and frustration around the haredi draft
Earlier on Thursday, Shas spiritual leader and former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said at a conference in Beit Shemesh that former prisoner of Zion and current Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, who is responsible for the bill proposal to regulate haredi IDF service, should have “stayed” in the USSR.Yosef’s comments, a recording of which was published by Kol Berama Radio, could not be independently verified by The Jerusalem Post.
In the recording, Yosef is heard saying, “His [Edelstein’s] soul is an abomination, he was a prisoner of Zion and came to the Land [of Israel], it is too bad he came, he should have remained there. He is causing trouble for yeshiva students... Edelstein and Netanyahu, all this [political] right-wing is a lie. Evil villains!”
The comments came hours before Edelstein was set to meet with former Shas minister Ariel Atias and Cabinet
Secretary Yossi Fuchs at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, to continue negotiating over the content of the bill. The three met a number of times this week in an attempt to find a solution that will end what appears to be a spiraling political crisis, following haredi threats to topple the government if the bill does not advance.
Members of Shas, which has publicly taken a hardline stance and demanded that the bill exempt a majority of eligible men from service, have taken a more pragmatic approach in private. The prime minister is concentrating his efforts on reaching an agreement with Shas, since even if its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism’s seven MKs, leave the coalition, the coalition will still enjoy a 61-59 majority in the Knesset.
Shas’s Council of Sages will meet at the beginning of next week to decide on the party’s next steps. The equivalent Council of UTJ’s hassidic faction, Agudat Yisrael, will meet on Thursday night for the same purpose. Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, spiritual leader of UTJ’s Lithuanian faction Degel Hatorah, said on Wednesday that he was “close” to ordering the faction’s MKs to quit the government and support a bill proposal to disperse the Knesset.
The FADC’s legal team has been working on formulating the text of a new bill, which will reach the committee in the coming weeks. However, this may not leave enough time for the bill proposal to pass into law by the end of the Knesset summer session in late July, in which case the current law, which requires that all eligible haredi men serve in the IDF, will continue to apply as is at least until October. In any case, if the Knesset disperses, the bill cannot proceed.
The bill proposal will likely include draft quotas from the haredi sector that will increase annually, eventually reaching 50% of each graduating class, as well as sanctions on individuals who ignore draft orders. Despite the fact that the previous legal exemption expired in June 2024, a vast majority of the approximately 24,000 draft orders to haredi men since then have been ignored. The IDF has already stated that it will not meet the goal it committed to in the High Court, of 4,800 haredi draftees in the 2024-2025 draft year, which will end on June 30.
Supporters have argued that the bill will lead to an immediate increase in the number of draftees and bring thousands more haredim into the army. Critics, however, have countered that there is no guarantee that even with new sanctions, those who receive orders with the new law in place will actually respect them; and that there is no legal justification to enable 50% of haredim to continue being exempt from service, while secular and religious-Zionist Israelis do not enjoy the same privilege.
A recording of a conversation between Netanyahu and Rabbi Hirsch from March, which was published by Channel 13’s Lior Keinan on Wednesday, revealed that the prime minister had requested to receive more time to ensure that the bill’s legislative process remains legally sound. The prime minister also told Hirsch that removing former defense minister Yoav Gallant and former chief of staff Herzi Halevi from their positions served as proof that he had acted to “remove barriers” hindering the bill.