PM may call early elections to preempt Haredim over IDF draft, ministers say

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may call new elections soon if he feels his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners intend to topple the government over its failure to pass a law enshrining the ultra-Orthodox community’s blanket exemption from military service, ministers have said.

A senior minister told The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site Zman Yisrael that the premier would seek to salvage the votes of people who have come to find the exemption for tens of thousands of Haredi yeshiva students intolerable, with a large number of reservists being called up for a fourth or fifth round of service in the current war to support the expanded Gaza offensive.

“Netanyahu knows there is no solution to the Haredi enlistment matter,” the minister said. “He is biding his time and will eventually say, ‘On this important matter, I didn’t cave.’ That way, in the election, he’ll at least get the support of reservists and other citizens who won’t put up with the inequality in military conscription.”

The issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment to the IDF is politically fraught, with the community’s leadership fearing the secularization of its young men if they were to serve in the military and ordering yeshiva students to defy call-ups.

Decades of efforts to pass a law regulating the matter have fallen flat, with the High Court of Justice striking down any legislation remotely acceptable to Haredi leaders on the grounds that it harms the principle of equality before the law.

Last year, the court ruled that decades-long sweeping exemptions for the community are unlawful because they are not based in legislation, and the Haredi parties have been demanding the passage of a law enshrining the exemptions for most men.

Netanyahu, who committed to passing such a law in talks with the Haredi parties to form the government in late 2022,  has been pushing off the matter, defusing periodic crises and threats to topple the government mid-war. However, threats to the coalition now appear to be more serious, with no solution in sight and potential political rivals escalating their attacks on the government over the issue.

MK Yuli Edelstein, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party who heads the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has been blocking the advancement of the exemption legislation through his committee, pledging that any law on the matter must “significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”

On Wednesday, Netanyahu held a meeting in his office on the legislation, with Edelstein and Aryeh Deri, the head of the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas party. Hebrew media reported that the three-and-a-half-hour meeting came to an abrupt end with no compromise in sight.

The Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism was quick to criticize the meeting, accusing Netanyahu of seeking to divide and conquer his Haredi coalition partners.

Sam Sokol and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.