AG says Haredi draft bill can’t ignore fundamentally changed reality after October 7
Gali Baharav-Miara tells defense minister legislation must include sanctions against draft dodgers, and must be submitted to her office for legal review

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Thursday that legislation being written to deal with the issue of Haredi enlistment must include sanctions against draft dodgers, warning Defense Minister Israel Katz against trying to pass a bill that does not account for Israel’s changed security needs following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
In her letter, the attorney general said she had received information that the legislation currently being drafted was based on a bill that passed a first parliamentary reading in 2022, and which has since been revived. However, she wrote, that draft could not be considered relevant today, considering both the new threats to national security and the increased needs of the manpower-strapped army 15 months into a grueling multifront war.
Baharav-Miara also stressed that any legislation must include personal sanctions against those who do not show up for enlistment when called.
“Provisions must be made to enable the imposition of personal sanctions on individuals,” she wrote. Such sanctions are vehemently opposed by the Haredi political and religious leadership, which objects to members of the community serving in the army, fearing they will be secularized.
The attorney general warned that past outlines relating to the number and age of people to be recruited, the pace of the process, the length of service and the lack of personal sanctions against draft dodgers “are no longer relevant.”

Baharav-Miara also wrote that if the legislation is not submitted to her office ahead of time, “no proper procedure for legal counseling can be carried out by anyone, including the defense establishment’s legal advice bodies.”
She contended that advancing the law without consulting her office would be “another procedural fault,” in addition to several other steps she said were taken to circumvent her office. Such procedural problems would make it more difficult to defend the legislation if it eventually faces an appeal at the High Court of Justice.
Baharav-Miara noted that she has been meeting with IDF and other officials on the issue. While coalition members have often stated that the IDF is not capable of absorbing the estimated 70,000 Haredi males currently eligible for service, she wrote that the IDF is capable of absorbing 4,800 Haredi males by July 2025, that it would be able to absorb 20% more than that number over the following 12 months, and that after July 2026, “it is expected that there will be no limits” on the number of Haredi males it could absorb into the ranks.
In response to the attorney general’s comments, Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs criticized the demand that the legislation be coordinated with her office.
“The Knesset and the [Foreign Affairs and Defense] Committee have excellent legal counseling mechanisms, and they — not the Attorney General’s Office — will determine whether the law meets the necessary standards,” he said.
The attorney general has clashed repeatedly with the coalition since its inception two years ago, and ministers have discussed potential proceedings to fire her.
In a landmark ruling in June, the High Court ruled unanimously that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military, since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service. Since then, the government has been trying to agree on legislation to regulate Haredi enlistment in a manner that would satisfy both the ultra-Orthodox parties and the court.

Ultra-Orthodox coalition parties are demanding legislation that would see some increased enlistment but would broadly maintain the widescale exemption from IDF or other national service for ultra-Orthodox men. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose governing majority depends on the support of the United Torah Judaism and Shas parties, has been seeking to meet their demand, in the face of bitter and growing political and public opposition, including from some members of his own Likud party.
One key voice against the bill under discussion was Likud’s Yoav Gallant, who was fired by Netanyahu as defense minister in November over various disagreements, including his opposition to the current military draft bill. On Wednesday Gallant announced he was quitting the Knesset, citing the issue as a key consideration.
Another central figure opposed to broad exemptions has been Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, who chairs the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The proposed legislation is currently stuck in the committee, with Edelstein saying the needs of the IDF must be met first. He has vowed to only advance the legislation if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee issued its schedule for next week on Thursday afternoon, without any hearings slated to discuss the bill.
The coalition has faced growing internal crises. Earlier this week National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party voted against a key budget law over his demand for a larger budget for the police force. This forced Netanyahu, who had just undergone prostate surgery, to leave his hospital bed to go to the Knesset in order to ensure the legislation passed. Haredi parties have threatened to also vote against coalition legislation until their demands on the draft are met.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused Katz last week of promising the ultra-Orthodox parties that the legislation will ensure that “not one Haredi person will be drafted” in exchange for their votes in support of the budget.

Katz spoke out on Thursday morning in defense of the legislation on the agenda, after Gallant, in a speech announcing his resignation from the Knesset Wednesday night, said a bill allowing for mass exemptions would endanger national security.
Without mentioning Gallant by name, Katz slammed the “cynical political use of an ethical issue such as enlistment to the IDF.”
The defense minister asserted that “when it is completed, the new enlistment law will be a historic turning point and will recruit tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox individuals to meaningful service in the IDF, for the first time since the establishment of the state.” He argued that recent attempts to draft members of that community without agreement “failed, and caused a decline in the number of Haredim serving in the IDF.”
In the months before he was fired, Gallant issued thousands of enlistment summonses to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to comply with the High Court ruling on the matter. But less than 10% of the recipients showed up to army induction centers, the military said.
MK Matan Kahana, of Benny Gantz’s centrist opposition party National Unity, criticized Gallant on Thursday for resigning from the Knesset, saying it would only serve to help the passage of the coalition’s draft bill.
Speaking to Army Radio, Kahana said that Gallant’s resignation means he will be replaced with a new lawmaker — likely Abed Afif, a representative of the Druze minority — who will be aligned with the coalition and boost Netanyahu’s standing.
“This is an act that will make it easier for Netanyahu to advance the exemptions law,” Kahana lamented. “There is no doubt he could have spearheaded the struggle against the law [as an MK]. Nobody knows better than he how much the IDF needs fighters right now.”
Sam Sokol contributed to this report.