The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will hold a series of meetings this week for the preparation of a bill proposal to regulate the issue of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) service in the IDF.
The committee’s schedule shows that the coalition is serious about passing the bill into law in the coming months after recent threats by haredi politicians indicated that a failure to do so may jeopardize the government. The committee meetings on the haredi draft in recent weeks focused on general principles, but this changed on Thursday when the committee began to debate the bill’s actual language, paragraph by paragraph.
The legislation is a government bill that passed its first reading under the Lapid-Bennett 2022 government. The current government approved resuming the legislation from where the previous one left off. The Attorney-General’s Office, which is responsible for providing legal advice to the government, said that this was “not legally viable,” since the bill was no longer relevant to the current security situation.
The government ignored the A-G’s opinion, claiming that renewing previous legislation was merely intended to speed up the process and that the text would be significantly altered. However, the coalition has yet to change the bill’s existing language. The decision to renew the prior legislation is currently being challenged in the High Court of Justice.
Thursday’s discussion focused on the definition of who is considered haredi. Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs said that the bill should stick with the current definition, which defines a haredi as someone who spent at least two years in a haredi educational institution between the ages of 14-18.
Definition of haredi
Members of the opposition, the A-G’s office, and the IDF pointed out that the definition was problematic, as it included people who met the criteria but no longer lived a haredi lifestyle and de facto no longer belonged to the haredi collective.
The committee on Thursday also began to debate paragraphs that lay out the quota of haredi draftees per year. The committee on Monday will continue debating this issue while also holding a classified meeting on the IDF’s current personnel needs.
On Tuesday, the committee will formulate new quotas based on updated personnel requirements. It will also debate the paragraph that lays out institutional sanctions on yeshivot.
Fuchs last week outlined the most detailed version of the government’s plan yet. According to the secretary, the government intends to begin by drafting 4,800 haredim in the 2024 draft year (between July 2024–June 2025), 5,760 haredim in the 2025 draft year (July 2025–June 2026), and then a gradual increase until reaching a number equivalent to 50% of the 18-year-old haredi cohort within seven years.
This is projected to be approximately 9,000 out of a graduating cohort numbering 18,000.
Fuchs explained, however, that the yearly number of draftees would not come out of the specific graduating cohort but out of the entire “pool” of eligible haredi draftees, including older haredim who are still eligible for the draft. In other words, in seven years from now, according to the government’s plan, 9,000 haredim must join the IDF, but they may include all relevant ages.
Regarding sanctions, Fuchs said that the requirement for the quota is on the haredi community as a collective. If the collective meets the quota, then all the eligible haredim who did not join the IDF will not be sanctioned and will be eligible for state benefits. However, if the collective does not meet the quota, all eligible haredim will be sanctioned and lose rights to benefits such as state-subsidized daycare.
According to the Attorney-General’s Office, the government’s plan may not meet constitutional standards, as it does not provide a legal basis for limiting the goal of the haredi draft to 50% of the annual cohort. It also suffers from procedural flaws – despite it being a government bill, the government did not debate the current version that Fuchs outlined.
In addition, the version laid out by the government secretary may not lead to the desired results. The head of the Finance Ministry’s budget department, Yoav Gardos, said in the committee last week that history has proven that when the quota is a requirement on the collective, there is no incentive for the individual to enlist.
Even if the individuals will end up receiving sanctions, the individual haredi has no incentive to be the one to “fill the quota.” In addition, positive incentives, as opposed to sanctions, have proven to be ineffective on the haredi public – already today, there are significant incentives to serve in the IDF, yet the haredi numbers remain low, Gardos said.
The Knesset Finance Committee this week has only one debate scheduled for the 2025 budget law. This continues a trend in recent weeks of slow progress on the budget, despite the fact that the government is now operating on a “continuing budget” from 2024 that hinders government decision-making procedures.
The finance committee will, however, hold two meetings on parts of the Economic Arrangements Bill, which traditionally accompanies the budget and includes major economic reforms.
Another central legislative proposal, to change the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee, will not be debated this week, since Knesset Constitution Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman, who is overseeing the bill’s advance, is sitting shiva for his father, who passed away on Thursday.