United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf is urging his haredi colleagues to introduce a bill to disperse the Knesset, his spokesperson said Tuesday. He hopes the move will cause the government to advance a bill to regulate haredi service in the IDF, the spokesperson added.
UTJ convened Tuesday in the Knesset to discuss its next steps. The rabbinical leaders of UTJ’s Degel Hatorah faction are expected to convene on Wednesday to decide whether to fall in line with the more hawkish stance of Goldknopf’s Agudat Yisrael faction.
According to law, if a bill to disperse the Knesset passes, an election is automatically called and must occur within 90 days.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s legal team has been working on formulating the text of a draft bill, which is expected to be ready within weeks.
This may not leave enough time for the bill to pass into law by the end of the Knesset summer session in late July. That means the current law, which requires that all eligible haredi men serve in the IDF, will be in effect at least until October.
The bill will likely include draft quotas from the haredi sector that will increase annually and eventually reach 50% of each graduating class, as well as penalties for individuals who ignore draft orders.
IDF expects to fall short of haredi draftee goal
Even though the previous legal exemption expired last June, most of the estimated 24,000 draft orders sent to haredi men since then have been ignored. The IDF has already said it will not meet the commitment it made to the High Court of Justice to have 4,800 haredi draftees in the 2024-2025 draft year, which ends on June 30.
The bill’s supporters have said it will lead to an immediate increase in the number of draftees and bring thousands of haredim into the army.
Its critics have said even with new sanctions, there is no guarantee that those who receive orders 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.
In a press conference ahead of his party’s weekly meeting on Tuesday, opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) called on haredi rabbis to acknowledge that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was deceiving them.
“I want to say from here to the great rabbis of Israel – to the Gerrer Rebbe, to Rabbi [Dov] Landau, to Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, to Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef: Know that you are being deceived,” he said. “Netanyahu knows that there will be no draft evasion law. He is just stalling to somehow get through the [Knesset] summer session.
“All that interests him is remaining in power during his cross-examination in court. He is selling you myths and empty promises. He neither knows how nor can he pass the law you want.
“What we are offering the haredim is what we are offering all the citizens of the country: a functioning government, personal security, tax reductions, lower prices, good relations with the world, and the opportunity to be part of the Israeli story,” Lapid said.
Goldknopf’s chief of staff and right-hand man, Motti Babchik, met with National Unity chairman Benny Gantz in the Knesset on Tuesday, KAN News reported. A spokesperson for Gantz confirmed the report but did not respond to a query regarding the content of the meeting.