Smotrich says he’s open to compromises with Haredim over enlistment to army

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says that he is “willing to make compromises with the Haredim” and accepts that ultra-Orthodox men who are enrolled full-time in yeshiva be exempted from conscription — but only on condition that the community actively endorses the idea that “anyone who is not studying must enlist,” because “this is a social process that needs to happen.”

The senior minister’s comments, made in an interview with the pro-government Channel 14, seem to indicate that he would have supported the coalition’s Haredi draft exemption bill, which was strongly opposed by some members of his far-right Religious Zionism party, and about which he repeatedly declined to say how he would vote.

The legislation — which would ostensibly increase military conscription in the Haredi community, but ultimately enable continued exemptions for full-time yeshiva students — was widely seen as legally dubious and laden with loopholes. The Knesset’s Haredi factions moved to dissolve the Knesset last month over the coalition’s failure to pass the bill, though the parliament is set to dissolve automatically next month anyway. An effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to revive the stalled legislation in order to head off slightly early elections failed after the Haredim rejected an updated draft of the legislation.