Edelstein delays IDF reservists law amidst growing coalition tensions over draft
Haredim said to consider exiting government but staying in coalition over senior Likud MK’s statement that enlistment legislation will pass ‘with broad agreement’ or not at all
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein appeared to assert his independence from the coalition on the issue of Israel Defense Forces enlistment Wednesday morning, delaying a vote on a Defense Ministry-backed “draft Security Service Law” due to what he said was a failure to reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
“I refused to mobilize the coalition. There will be no situation in which the extension of this law will pass on the bayonets of the coalition,” Edelstein explained during the debate. “Either we all reject the IDF’s request or we all agree on something. I have no personal, factional, party, or coalition interest in passing it on. Either we’ll agree on something or not, but we’re all together.”
If passed, the law would extend a temporary measure raising the exemption age for reserve military service from 40 to 41 for soldiers and from 45 to 46 for officers for several additional months due to a manpower shortage amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Edelstein’s decision to go against the government-backed bill came less than a day after the veteran Likud legislator took a similar stance on a separate government-supported ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill currently being debated in his committee — a move that some reports indicate may be prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Haredi allies to reconsider their position in the governing coalition.
Netanyahu reportedly warned Edelstein on Tuesday evening that his promise to advance that bill only “with broad agreement” threatens to topple the government.
The statement was interpreted by some as giving the opposition a veto over the bill — which would lower the exemption age for yeshiva students from 26 to 21 while “very slowly” increasing the rate of ultra-Orthodox conscription.
Coalition members say that Edelstein was misunderstood, and would not help the opposition vote down the bill if it came to a vote, Channel 12 reported.
It has become clear in recent days with the failure of the so-called Rabbis Bill that the ultra-Orthodox no longer trust Netanyahu’s government to advance their interests in the Knesset, and Edelstein’s actions on Wednesday, alongside his potential willingness to block the ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill on similar grounds, may serve to confirm this perception.
Following Tuesday morning’s historic High Court ruling — which found that there is no legal basis for excluding Haredi men from the military draft — the legislation has taken on even more importance for the Haredim, who view it as their last chance to head off the widespread conscription of previously exempt yeshiva students.
Ultra-Orthodox men of military age have been able to avoid being conscripted to the IDF for decades by enrolling in yeshivas for Torah study and obtaining repeated one-year service deferrals until they reach the age of military exemption.
The court’s decision states explicitly that the government must “act to enforce the Law for Military Service on yeshiva students,” compelling state agencies to take active steps to draft such men into IDF service.
However, it did not discuss details relating to its implementation, implying that the government has some leeway in how many ultra-Orthodox men it needs to draft on an immediate basis and providing an opening for the Knesset to have an influence on how enlistment is carried out.
According to Hebrew media reports, in the wake of Edelstein’s statement about the Haredi enlistment law, both the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties have started to weigh leaving the government while remaining in the coalition.
In a statement, Shas said that party chairman Aryeh Deri had met with Moshe Maya, a senior member of the Shas Council of Torah Sages, on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the court ruling and its impact.
Maya is a hardliner who asserted in the wake of the ruling that it is even “forbidden for those who don’t study to go to the army,” contradicting more moderate ultra-Orthodox figures, including from his own party, who have floated the mobilization of those not enrolled full-time in yeshiva as a possible compromise.
Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long presented the forcible enlistment of yeshiva students as a red line that would endanger the already tenuous stability of their alliance with Netanyahu, who is dependent on their support to maintain his thin majority in the Knesset.
Speaking with The Times of Israel on Tuesday prior to Edelstein’s statement, a spokesman for UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf said that if the bill passes “everything will be okay” — and that no decision on the future of the coalition had yet been made as the court’s ruling is “theoretical” until the army begins to implement it.
The committee has only until the end of July, when the next Knesset recess begins, to pass the legislation, which has drawn significant opposition from coalition lawmakers who have said they will not vote for it without significant revisions.
These include Edelstein, who has previously indicated that he would not allow the bill to pass through his committee in its current form.
Some lawmakers on the committee hope to rewrite the bill to speed up the enlistment of the Haredim, and see the court’s ruling as giving them leverage to make that happen.
Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, an alternate member of the committee, mused on Tuesday that without new legislation there will be no way to ensure the continued flow of government money to the yeshivas.
This creates “a significant incentive for the ultra-Orthodox and the coalition to finish the legislation” and gives them reason to agree on a “reasonable” annual recruitment quota, he said.
