Liberman urges opposition parties to draft own version of Haredi enlistment bill

Avigdor Liberman on Monday called for a united front on the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment, urging his fellow opposition party leaders to work together to draft a universal conscription bill to serve as an alternative to the enlistment legislation currently making its way through the Knesset.

In a letter, Liberman invited former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz and The Democrats chief Yair Golan to send representatives to a “joint forum” aimed at drafting an opposition bill before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee finishes its work on a controversial government proposal regulating Haredi enlistment.

Addressing reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Liberman complained that the government was engaged in the widespread mobilization of “PTSD-suffering” reservists who have already served hundreds of days since October 7 while “at the same time trying to exempt an entire population [the ultra-Orthodox] from military or civilian service with the help of the evasion law.”

“It is important that all Zionist parties formulate a single conscription law for everyone — not just the ultra-Orthodox, but for all citizens of Israel,” Liberman stated, calling for the formulation of a bill “that will result in conscription for everyone – without targets, without quotas, and without exemptions.”

If the other opposition party leaders sign on, “within a week, we can finish a bill and submit it,” he asserted.

Following Liberman’s statement, Lapid’s spokesman announced, without elaborating, that he would hold a meeting in his Knesset office next Wednesday with the heads of the “Zionist opposition parties” to discuss enlistment, ostensibly leaving out the Arab-majority Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al parties.

Asked for comment, a spokesman for The Democrats party chief Yair Golan says that the left-wing party “supports and will participate in any initiative that has the power to dismantle the government of failure and destruction” and will “appoint one or more MKs as a representative on the proposed committee.”

A spokesman for Bennett did not reply to a request for comment.

Shas and United Torah Judaism, the coalition’s two ultra-Orthodox parties, have been pushing for the passage of legislation enshrining military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community since the High Court ruled in June last year that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal.

Both parties are currently boycotting the advancement of private member bills sponsored by their coalition partners to protest the government’s failure to advance the legislation, which has long been held up in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee by chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud).

Edelstein has pledged that any law on the issue of Haredi service coming out of his committee would “significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base” while rejecting suggestions to significantly limit the rate and scale of Haredim enlistment.

Earlier this month, Edelstein announced that deliberations on the bill were complete, and that his committee’s professional staff would now begin drafting a new text of the highly sensitive legislation.

There is reason to believe that the rewritten legislation will be unacceptable to the Haredim, with Edelstein reportedly stating last week that there was a chance that “in three weeks this whole business could explode.”

Speaking with the Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat earlier this month, UTJ lawmaker Yaakov Asher warned that if the Knesset did not pass draft exemption legislation by the end of the summer session, July 27, his party would no longer be able to remain in the government.

“If this law does not pass in this session… we will have a very big problem sitting in such a government, period,” he said, adding that UTJ “cannot be part of a government” that turns Haredim into “criminals.”