The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair, Yuli Edelstein (Likud), should summon Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir to issue clarifications regarding the goals of the upcoming expansion of the war in Gaza, opposition MKs from the panel demanded in a letter on Tuesday.
According to MKs Gadi Eisenkot (National Unity), Ram Ben Barak (Yesh Atid), Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), Sharon Nir (Yisrael Beytenu), Merav Michaeli (The Democrats), Moshe Tur-Paz (Yesh Atid), and Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a presentation to the committee on Sunday, “Inaccurately presented the current war objectives and did not provide the status of their achievement so far.”
They added that so far, operational plans, known as “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” have been presented for the expansion of the war in Gaza.
The MKs requested that Edelstein summon Katz to provide an update on the status of the achievement of the war’s goals, and that Zamir be summoned to present the operation’s plans, prior to the approval of an extensive call-up of reservists.
The letter came a day after the committee failed on Monday to pass a vote to enable the continuation of emergency call-ups of reservists (known as Tzav 8).
The government’s ability to continue calling up reservists on emergency orders was set to expire on Thursday (May 15). The committee, in a renewed vote on Tuesday, approved to extend the expiration date by just a week, to May 22, and Edelstein announced that it would be extended again only on the condition that Katz or Zamir brief the committee on the IDF’s plans.
This issue is connected to the government’s failure thus far to draft significant numbers of haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the IDF in order to lessen the burden on reservists.
Opposition questions the government's ability to continuously call up IDF reserves
In addition to the reasons laid out in the letter, opposition MKs have argued that the government should not be given unlimited ability to keep calling up reservists for long periods, while at the same time failing to expand the IDF’s ranks and even attempting to pass a law that could exempt over half of eligible haredi men from service.
Further, the governing coalition only enjoys a narrow majority in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, since haredi MKs have refused to vote with the coalition since the beginning of the Knesset summer session on May 5 in order to apply pressure to advance the aforementioned haredi draft law.
However, Shas MK Avraham Benayahu Bezalel decided to align with the coalition in the vote to extend the expiration date by a week. Bezalel’s vote was the deciding one, since this only passed 8-7.
A civil society organization called Imahot Bahazit (mothers at the front) criticized the fact that a haredi MK’s vote was the deciding factor, arguing that “draft dodgers” were sending other people’s children, not their own, to the “killing fields” of Gaza.