MKs from the two haredi parties in the coalition will continue disrupting legislation by abstaining from votes in the Knesset plenum until “significant progress” is made on a bill proposal to regulate ultra-Orthodox service in the IDF, according to a source from Shas and one from United Torah Judaism.
The MKs are acting on the directions of the spiritual leaders of their respective parties. According to the source from UTJ, the party’s two factions, the Lithuanian Degel Hatorah and hassidic Agudat Yisrael, are coordinating their responses.
To this end, the leader of the Gur Hassidic sect, and a key spiritual leader of Degel Hatorah, Rabbi Dov Lando, have taken the stance that without “significant progress” on the bill by Shavuot on June 1, the factions will take further “severe” steps. The source did not specify what these steps were, but they would likely entail resigning from the coalition, which could possibly topple the government.
A second spiritual leader of Degel Hatorah, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, has taken a more moderate stance, but has not laid out a specific counterproposal as to how to create necessary pressure, the source from UTJ said.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Likud MK Yuli Edelstein announced last week that the committee’s legal team will begin formulating the bill’s language, following dozens of committee meetings that lasted for months.
The bill is widely expected to create draft quotas that will increase every year, with economic sanctions against individuals who ignore draft orders. The size of the quotas, the definition of the groups to which they will apply, and the scope and type of sanctions are still unclear.
Edelstein did not announce when the new bill would be presented in the committee. The committee’s schedule for this week did not include a meeting on the bill in question.
Haredi MKs have attempted to lower the quotas and to limit the scope of the economic effects of the sanctions. Opposition MKs, meanwhile, have questioned the legality of the existence of quotas in the first place, arguing instead that the base assumption should be that haredi men should be drafted just like other parts of the population, and then some exceptional individuals can receive exemptions.
Coalition pressure increases
Pressure within the coalition increased last week after IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir directed the IDF’s Personnel Directorate to provide a plan to send thousands of fresh draft orders to haredim, in the wake of a renewed call-up of thousands of reservists ahead of an expansion of military operations in Gaza.
The IDF under former chief of staff Herzi Halevi committed last year to drafting 4,800 haredim in the 2024-25 draft year, which is set to end on June 30, over 5,200 the next year, and the entire haredi cohort from 2026 onwards. In a closed discussion in the FADC on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly echoed these numbers, pledging that 10,000 haredim would be drafted within the “next two years.”
However, the IDF has already announced it will not reach the goal for 2024-25, as the vast majority of over 10,000 draft orders sent to haredim were either ignored or are still being processed.