IDF manpower chief: Extension of service period doesn’t replace need for more troops

After the Knesset voted to extend the mandatory military service period for males to 32 months, the chief of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate says the move does not replace the army’s immediate need for more troops.

“The extension of service… is an operational necessity to meet all the operational challenges before us and to allow a minimal breathing room for regular and reserve personnel, to preserve professional training durations, to stabilize units and to advance further force build-up on a limited scale,” says Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa in a missive to troops.

But Kalifa says the two-month extension to the mandatory service period “does not cancel the operational need of the IDF… to expand the scope of draftees and those serving from the entire Israeli public and to regulate this in an adapted reserve service law,” in reference to the ultra-Orthodox community, which the government is trying to exempt from service.

He says the IDF will still need a further extension to the mandatory service to “allow a broader force build-up.”

The IDF had sought to return the mandatory service period to the original 36 months, as it was until 2015. However, lawmakers only agreed to extend it from 30 months to 32 months. Under the current legislation, the mandatory service period will again be shortened to 30 months in June 2029.

The IDF has repeatedly said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits — including 7,000 combat troops — due to the strain on its standing and reserve forces caused by the yearslong multifront war. Some 70,000 ultra-Orthodox men are currently eligible for service but have not been drafted.

The government just passed highly contentious legislation halting arrests of Haredi draft dodgers, which the High Court then immediately froze, pending a hearing into petitions against the law.