Netanyahu reportedly seeks to advance bill on conscription after getting Haredi OK

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly decided to move forward with a controversial bill that would regulate ultra-Orthodox military conscription and draft exemptions, after Haredi parties were said to give the measure a green light.

A Wednesday report on Channel 12 said that Netanyahu sees the bill as the only way to stabilize his coalition, which now lacks a majority in the Knesset. Since the opening of the body’s winter session last month, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties have been upholding a partial legislative boycott of the coalition’s bills, stymying its agenda.

Pushing through the bill on conscription, according to the network, could bring the Haredi parties back into Netanyahu’s corner. But it also poses grave political risks for the premier, as critics have panned it as an effort to perpetuate ultra-Orthodox exemption from the draft after two years of war and repeated warnings from the military that it’s facing a manpower shortage.

The bill, drafted by Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, sets a target of enlisting 50% of each annual ultra-Orthodox draft cohort within five years.

Its opponents, however, have said the bill is symbolic and tainted by loopholes. It waters down the terms of an earlier conscription bill proposed by Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the former chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, who was pushed out of that role following Haredi objections.

He was replaced with MK Boaz Bismuth, a Netanyahu loyalist. The current bill, floated by Bismuth, lowers the threshold for yeshiva students to qualify for draft exemptions. It also softens the sanctions that were included in Edelstein’s bill. Draft evaders, for example, will be able to travel out of Israel after age 26, and some who would have had their driver’s license suspended will no longer face that penalty.

Netanyahu is hoping that the bill can be passed into law, or at least come close, within the next month, Channel 12 reported. Shas is due to support the bill in addition to Degel Hatorah, one faction of UTJ. Those votes would make the bill’s passage likely.

The other UTJ faction, Agudat Yisrael, is divided on whether it should support or oppose the bill, Channel 12 said, although the faction is too small to sway the vote without the other Haredi lawmakers.

The prime minister’s reported plan comes as the debate over drafting Haredi men has reached a fever pitch. Some Haredi men have been arrested for draft evasion, and the IDF has said that it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges. There are an estimated 80,000 Haredi men eligible for the draft who haven’t enlisted.

A massive rally last week saw hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men block the entrance to Jerusalem in protest of the effort to conscript them. The rally was cut short after an attendee fell to his death from a building.

The ongoing controversy could imperil the passage of the bill, Channel 12 reported, as it may draw mounting opposition from those who see it as a draft evasion law, rather than a conscription law.

Netanyahu’s opponents in the upcoming election, due to take place by next fall, have already hammered him over what they have described as an effort to perpetuate Haredi draft exemptions.

Sam Sokol and Ariela Karmel contributed to this report.