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Monday, December 8, 2025
PM says draft law will ease burden on reservists, significantly increase Haredi conscription
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleAriela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that his government’s proposed draft law will ease the burden on reservists and increase conscription from the Haredi public, in his first remarks regarding Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth’s new law to regulate conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
“This is the beginning of a historic process to integrate Haredim into the IDF,” he says, speaking before the Knesset in this evening’s 40-signature Knesset debate.
His government’s proposed law would ease the burden on reservists, Netanyahu says, claiming that “for every additional regular battalion from the Haredi public, 10 reserve battalions will be released,” which, en masse, he says would lead to the release of hundreds of reserve battalions.
Directly addressing the opposition, Netanyahu says that “the draft evasion law is the law you brought forward, not ours,” and that his government’s proposal would achieve conscription targets “three to four times higher” than those proposed by the short-lived government led by then-prime minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.
“The law regulates the status of yeshiva students. The world of Torah has protected us for thousands of years and will continue to protect us while conscripting the Haredi public,” he adds.
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