Coalition, lacking majority, postpones vote to extend call-up of IDF reservists

Absence of ousted committee chair Yuli Edelstein and second MK forces another delay on extending emergency reserve call-ups ahead of end-of-month deadline

By Ariela Karmel
  • Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
 13 August 2025, 11:21 pm
IDF troops in Gaza in a photograph released by the IDF on August 12. (IDF Spokesman)

A vote in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to extend the military’s authority to issue emergency call-up orders for Israel Defense Forces reservists was postponed on Monday yet again, after the coalition failed to secure a majority, according to Hebrew media reports.

The vote was supposed to be held on Wednesday, but the coalition lacked sufficient numbers to pass it due to the absence of the committee’s recently ousted chair, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, and New Hope MK Mishel Buskila.

Edelstein was recently ousted from chairing the powerful committee over his insistence on tough sanctions on draft dodgers being included in a long-sought bill regulating the enlistment to the military of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) has departed the government and the ruling coalition over the failure to pass such a law, and fellow Haredi party Shas has left the government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition currently has 60 members, one seat short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, after the departure of UTJ and MK Avi Maoz last month. But the Knesset has entered a three-month recess during which the parliament cannot convene for a vote to dissolve and call early elections.

“We just prevented, in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, an increase in the burden on reservists by blocking the proposal to extend emergency call-up orders for them,” said Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, in a statement. “Once again, the coalition has no majority. Israel has a non-functioning and illegitimate minority government.”

Yesh Atid MK Merav Ben Ari added: “They want to draft 300,000 reservists to retake Gaza, but they couldn’t find enough MKs to secure a majority in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee vote, so the vote was canceled.”

“We will not allow, on the one hand, the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists time and again,” while the government simultaneously “promote[s] mass draft evasion,” said Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman.

MK Boaz Bismuth, chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, leads a committee meeting at the Knesset, Jerusalem, on August 12, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The coalition failed in a similar vote in May before subsequently pushing it through. Coalition leaders kicked Likud MK Amit Halevi off the committee after he voted against the measure, replacing him with MK Ofir Katz.

The authorization of the IDF to draft reservists with emergency call-up orders has been brought for government approval every few months since the beginning of the war in October 2023.

The last order was approved in May, and it allowed the IDF to draft up to 450,000 reservists. That order is set to expire, and therefore a new order — allowing 430,000 reservists — was brought for approval.

The number does not mean the actual number of reservists that the IDF is calling up, as the record still remains at 287,000 — the number of reservists called up immediately in the wake of the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

In non-emergency times, the IDF can only call up reservists a long time in advance rather than immediately, and cannot call them up for a large number of days.

The current order will expire at the end of August, but the Knesset is at recess, and the building will physically be closed from August 17 until September 1. In order to convene another vote during this period, the coalition must muster a majority on the committee — which it has been unable to do for months.

There have been repeated calls from groups of reservists to not turn up for duty over the past two years, mostly as a protest against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, seen as undermining democracy, and against the renewed fighting in Gaza, which some critics say is a politically-motivated decision that will endanger the lives of the remaining hostages.

There is also mounting discontent at the number of days many reservists have been asked to serve since the start of the Gaza war, with some called up for hundreds of days. This has been exacerbated by government efforts to legislate an exemption for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox youths from the draft.

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