State requests 2-hour extension for response to High Court on Haredi draft

The state requests a new, two-hour extension to tell the High Court how it might resolve the ultra-Orthodox conscription conundrum, after requesting a half-day extension at close to midnight on Wednesday night.

The High Court did not respond one way or the other to the deadline extension request on Wednesday night.

The original deadline for the state to file its response to petitions demanding the immediate conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students was March 24, but the state then requested a three-day extension, which the court agreed to. It said at the time however that if no response was forthcoming by that time it would base its ruling on the information in its possession.

The second deadline extension request in 24 hours appears to indicate that the government is making a last-gasp effort to submit some kind of substantive response to the court.

Minutes before the Wednesday night deadline request, the Attorney General’s Office issued a dramatic draft response stating that come April 1 there would be no legal mechanism for not drafting ultra-Orthodox men of military age or funding the stipends of full time yeshiva students.

Prior to that, the Attorney General’s Office had upbraided Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs for failing to produce a detailed response to the court as to how it might increase ultra-Orthodox military service enlistment, telling Fuchs that the government’s proposal lacked even “a minimal professional foundation.”