Haredi leader said to tell PM he’d quit coalition over army draft issue if not for war
Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf complained to Netanyahu over government’s failure to solve matter, TV news reports
Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his United Torah Judaism party would have quit the coalition long ago over the end of blanket military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men if it were not for the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, Kan news reported Thursday.
“We would have resigned from the government a long time ago due to the violation of promises regarding the conscription law,” Goldknopf told Netanyahu during a meeting, Kan said in its unsourced report.
The outlet did not specify when the meeting took place.
The High Court mandated an end to broad exemptions for members of the Haredi community earlier this year after the government failed to legislate a law to regulate the matter.
Netanyahu met Goldknopf on Wednesday and, according to Hebrew media reports, promised that he would expedite a new planned law to facilitate exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service.
The prime minister reportedly told Goldknopf that he would push to fast-track the exemptions when the Knesset reconvenes at the end of its summer recess.
Efforts to pass such a bill have become broadly unpopular since the start of the war in Gaza, with the army facing persistent manpower shortages and reservists being called up repeatedly. Multiple members of Netanyahu’s coalition including in his Likud party have warned they will not back any overly sweeping proposal.
Goldknopf has threatened to vote against the upcoming budget, expected to be brought before the Knesset in several months, if a law does not advance. Failure to pass a budget could force elections. Of the 64 Knesset seats held by the government, UTJ holds seven, while second Haredi party Shas, which has also expressed intense consternation over the matter, holds 11.
Most ultra-Orthodox, also called Haredim, do not currently serve, but the issue has long remained unregulated by clear laws, despite a High Court of Justice demand to explicitly legislate the issue, and an order from the court in June that the military immediately begin to draft eligible Haredi men over the failure to pass such legislation.
The dispute over Haredim 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 the community’s young men.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe military service is incompatible with their way of life, and anti-enlistment protests have been common across the country for many years. Meanwhile, those Israelis who serve in the armed forces have long complained about an uneven distribution of the burden, a sentiment that has sharpened since Hamas’s October 7 attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, border skirmishes with Hezbollah along the northern border, and elevated violence in the West Bank.
