Edelstein: Knesset panel set to begin rewriting law on Haredi IDF exemptions

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s discussions on a proposed ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill have been completed and work to rewrite the legislation is set to begin, chairman Yuli Edelstein announces.

“We have exhausted the comprehensive and in-depth discussions we had in the committee. We are one step away from moving to the next stage: drafting the law,” Edelstein tells attendees of a settlement conference organized by the national-religious broadsheet Makor Rishon.

The bill being discussed has already passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum and is currently in committee in order to be prepared for the final two readings necessary for it to become law. Edelstein aims to rewrite the controversial legislation, having previously pledged that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”

Addressing the contents of the bill, Edelstein tells the conference that “we cannot manage without personal sanctions and institutional sanctions [for those who violate it].”

Turning to the recent IDF call-up of tens of thousands of reservists ahead of a planned offensive in Gaza, Edelstein states that it is “impossible to view the fifth and sixth rounds of reservist [call-ups] with equanimity when there are so many who are not serving,” referring to the Haredi population.

Netanyahu is scheduled to attend a closed session of Edelstein’s committee next week to discuss this issue.

Continuing to the topic of what the IDF should do to get ready for a potential influx of ultra-Orthodox soldiers, Edelstein insists that “the army must be prepared for a situation in which a young Haredi man who enters the army will also receive all the conditions to leave [the army still being] Haredi.”

In an apparent repudiation of a recent statement by one of the prime minister’s advisers that the bill would be passed “with or without him,” Edelstein argues that “either a real law will be passed or there will be no law. There will be no ‘bluff’ of a law.”