Government won’t submit Haredi enlistment proposal this week, despite promise to ultra-Orthodox parties

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will not submit a proposed compromise on ultra-Orthodox enlistment to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee this week, despite a promise to his Haredi coalition to take steps to advance the legislation exempting their constituents from military service this week, Channel 13 reports.

A bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that the needs of the IDF must come first, and that the panel would only advance the legislation if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.

The issue has been intentionally left off the committee’s agenda, with Edelstein’s spokesman releasing a schedule late last week that did not mention the conscription issue.

During a meeting of the committee last month, Defense Minister Israel Katz, who is reportedly working on a new outline, called for annual recruitment targets within what he termed a reasonable range, playing up the idea that half of eligible draftees could end up serving, while the rest continue studying in yeshivas.

At the same hearing, chairman Yuli Edelstein warned against any attempt to bypass his committee on the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment.

“On the matter of the enlistment bill, we strongly hope that, in the end, as I also pledged to the committee members, we will reach a real enlistment bill that will give genuine solutions to the personnel in the IDF, with gradual integration of the Haredi public,” Edelstein said, according to a Knesset readout of the closed session.