AG: Legally unacceptable to extend reservists’ service without reducing inequality in bearing military burden

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara tells the government that its temporary bill to extend a previous raise to the age of exemption from reserve military service is legally unacceptable unless an immediate effort is made to draft extra military power “from the entire population,” a reference to the tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who receive blanket exemptions from military service.

The attorney general says there is a “legal impediment” to increasing the burden of military service on those already serving without at the same time taking steps to “reduce the inequality in the burden of service and without exhausting all the legislative and other possibilities for the full realization of the military draft potential, and the [imposition of] the burden of service on the entire population.”

Baharav-Miara says that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has told her that failing to keep the higher age of exemption from reserve duty in place would have immediate, direct negative security consequences, and that she is therefore allowing the temporary bill to pass but only for three months.

That period of time must, however, “be immediately used beginning this coming month for formulating answers to the issue of the burden of military service, and executing them through legislation and non-legislative [means].”

The ongoing military service exemptions enjoyed by ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men has become a huge legal and political problem for the government. The framework allowing such exemptions expired at the end of March and it now appears that the High Court of Justice is very likely to order the government in the coming days or weeks to begin drafting at least several thousand Haredi men into the army.

The government is trying to advance a bill to restore those blanket exemptions due to the fierce opposition of the Haredi parties to members of their community being drafted, although such a bill would face heavy opposition in the Knesset, including from the defense minister.