Knesset panel to debate bill regulating conscription next week, as coalition tensions mount

By Sam Sokol 23 October 2025, 6:02 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

MK Boaz Bismuth leads a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset on August 11, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will debate a revised draft of a government-backed bill to regulate ultra-Orthodox conscription next Thursday.

According to a Knesset spokesperson, the discussions “will be based on the updated text of the bill by the committee chairman, which will be forwarded to the committee members in advance of the discussion.”

Protesting the fact that the new bill was not ready at the start of the Knesset winter legislative session this week, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party announced this morning that it would withdraw from all coalition roles it holds in the Knesset, giving up its chairmanships of parliamentary committees.

On Tuesday evening, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, a Likud MK, had said to Channel 14 that a revised draft of the government’s long-delayed bill would be presented to lawmakers next week, with the goal of sending it to the plenum for its final two readings in December.

The previous day, Bismuth had announced that he was postponing a series of scheduled discussions of the bill because his committee’s legal adviser required additional time to prepare a draft of the legislation based on a document of principles he had submitted last week.

According to Hebrew news reports, the document stipulates that within five years, 50 percent of the annual eligible Haredi draft cohort will be conscripted, and the age of exemption from conscription will remain at 26. Government funding for yeshivas will only be cut if they fail to meet army enlistment quotas after a year. Sanctions on individuals who do not serve in the army will only go into effect after two years if the overall enlistment goal is not met.

Moreover, sanctioned individuals will not lose their drivers’ licenses, although restrictions on issuing new licenses to draft evaders will apply.

In what many see as an attempt to secure support for Bismuth’s bill, and to pave the way for Shas’s return, the Likud party decided on Wednesday evening to boot former Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein from the panel altogether.