Lapid welcomes court decision on ultra-Orthodox draft

Yesh Atid party chairman Yair Lapid praises the High Court decision to strike down Knesset legislation meant to delay efforts to increase the ultra-Orthodox IDF draft, calling on coalition politicians to now “fulfill [their] obligation to the public.”

“Values won today. The spirit of the army won today. Our soldiers won today,” he says at a press conference in Tel Aviv. “We have started to change the game. This is why we got into politics.”

The 2015 amendment to the Equal Service Law — struck down today — had canceled a 2014 law pushed by Yesh Atid that had sought to raise the number of ultra-Orthodox men in military service.

Today’s ruling sets a one-year deadline to implement a different framework for handling the ultra-Orthodox draft.

Lapid calls on the prime minister to ensure that the new law “serves everyone and not just those with influence over the coalition,” referring but not naming the ultra-Orthodox parties that demanded the 2015 amendment to the 2014 law.

“Benjamin Netanyahu can no longer continue to ignore the needs of this country,” Lapid says.

The Yesh Atid chairman also calls on the Yisrael Beytenu party chairman, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, to publicly support a new law obligating conscription for everyone.

“You need to say today that everyone is going into the army. If not there will be no government,” he says of Liberman, suggesting that if he fails to do so, Lapid will not agree to any future coalition with Yisrael Beytenu.