Angering coalition ally, new Defense Minister Katz okays 7,000 more Haredi draft orders
Senior official in UTJ party says ruling Likud has ‘declared war’ on the ultra-Orthodox; 1,000 enlistment orders to be issued Sunday, and the rest in coming months
Defense Minister Israel Katz approved on Friday the issuance of 7,000 enlistment orders to ultra-Orthodox Israelis starting next week, infuriating the ruling party’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partner United Torah Judaism.
The decision was already made by former defense minister Yoav Gallant — long-derided by the coalition as aligned with the opposition — a day before he was fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. Katz did not cancel it, as some expected, and the Israel Defense Forces said earlier this week that it was going ahead with the move.
The first 1,000 orders will be sent out on Sunday, and the rest will be sent out within the coming months.
The defense ministry said that Katz “intends to hold an in-depth dialogue with all the parties to try and advance an agreed solution, which will allow a true integration of the ultra-Orthodox into the IDF to ease the burden on the conscript, career and reserve soldiers.”
Katz added that “the IDF will do everything to allow the ultra-Orthodox [soldiers] a supportive environment that will ensure their ability to fulfill their tasks in the IDF, alongside maintaining their religious lifestyle.”
Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have pushed for the passage of a law regulating military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community, after the High Court ruled in June that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal and violate the principle of equality.
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism and Shas parties have accused both Gallant and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of being the main obstacles to a bill enshrining the decades-long Haredi draft exemption.
Following Katz’s decision to forge ahead with issuing the draft orders to Haredim, a senior UTJ official was quoted by Hebrew media as saying: “It turns out it’s not the attorney general or Gallant — the Likud has decided to declare war on the ultra-Orthodox.”
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, welcomed Katz’s decision, writing on X: “I said in the Knesset that if you send the 7,000 draft orders to the ultra-Orthodox, soldiers and reservists will know that you are there for them. You did it without shying away.”
The IDF announced Thursday that it had seen a significant increase in the number of ultra-Orthodox men who have been drafted into the military this year so far. However, it is still far from reaching its conscription goals.
The military has said that it currently requires some 10,000 new soldiers — 75 percent of whom would be combat troops — but can only accommodate the enlistment of an additional 3,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers this year, due to their special needs. This would be in addition to some 1,800 Haredi soldiers who are already drafted annually.
Over the summer, the IDF Personnel Directorate sent out 3,000 draft orders to Haredi men aged 18-26. Out of those 3,000 men, less than 10% showed up at induction centers.
The dispute over the ultra-Orthodox community serving in the military is one of the most contentious in Israel, with decades of governmental and judicial attempts to settle the issue never achieving a stable resolution. The Haredi religious and political leadership fiercely resists any effort to draft young men.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life and fear that those who enlist will be secularized.
Israelis who do serve, however, say the decades-long arrangement of mass exemptions unfairly burdens them and their families, a sentiment that has intensified since the October 7, 2023, onslaught and the ensuing war, in which more than 780 soldiers have been killed and some 300,000 citizens have been called up to reserve duty.
