From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
High Court set to release what could be a bombshell ruling on Haredi conscription to IDF
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The High Court of Justice is set to release at 11 a.m. what could be a bombshell ruling over petitions demanding the immediate conscription to the military of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who are eligible for the draft.
During a hearing earlier this month, High Court justices expressed impatience and intense skepticism with the government’s ongoing refusal to begin drafting such men, despite the fact that all legal frameworks for granting them military service exemptions have expired.
The justices focused during the hearing on the position of the attorney general that the army could absorb in an initial phase some 3,000 new ultra-Orthodox recruits and repeatedly quizzed the government’s legal representative on that figure, possibly indicating that the court will issue an order to draft Haredi yeshiva students based on this number.
A ruling that Haredi men do have to perform military service would likely have dramatic political and societal ramifications, since the Haredi political parties fiercely oppose the draft for their constituents and are demanding politically toxic legislation to reinstate blanket draft exemptions, which some Likud MKs have already said they cannot vote for.
Protests by ultra-Orthodox demonstrators would also erupt, at first by the more radical segments of the community but they would likely be joined by the Haredi mainstream once their rabbis authorize such demonstrations.
