Rebuked by court and military, police say they will detain draft evaders

Following harsh criticism from both the military and the High Court of Justice, the Israel Police announced on Monday that Commissioner Danny Levy had issued new orders to officers to detain draft dodgers and wait for the Military Police to pick them up.

“During a random encounter between a police officer and a deserter, the police officer will detain the deserter, report to the Military Police and wait with the detainee until the arrival of a representative of the Military Police, who is required to arrive within 30 minutes of the report,” the police said in a statement.

“If the representative of the Military Police does not arrive, the deserter will be released and the police officer will issue him a summons to report to the Military Police,” the statement added.

The new policy announcement prompted harsh condemnations from the Knesset’s Haredi parties, with Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni accusing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, an advocate for tougher enforcement, of sinking “Israeli society into the depths of the abyss.”

The new police “is a populist and dangerous step, constituting a severe blow to Torah scholars,” declared United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, claiming that “no forceful policy or enforcement procedures on the ground will discourage us and Torah scholars will continue to sustain the world through their study.”

“At a time when acts of violence and crime are surging and murderers walk free in the streets, instead of the police properly handling national security, they decide to divert resources to pursue precious Torah scholars like common criminals. It is an absolute shame and disgrace that this is happening in the Jewish state,” the Sephardic Shas party said in a statement.

Over the past two years, the military has sent out tens of thousands of enlistment orders to members of the ultra-Orthodox community whose exemptions from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces were revoked under a 2024 High Court ruling. Most have ignored the orders, leading to large numbers of young men being classified as evaders and being subject to arrest or other sanctions.

While the military has made no move to arrest all 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18-24 believed to be eligible for service, the detainment of even a small fraction has ignited anger and occasionally violence in the country’s various Haredi enclaves.

The IDF on Sunday warned of a steadily worsening shortage of combat soldiers in the standing military, high burnout among troops, and fears that the reserve army could “collapse” if necessary legislation is not advanced by the government.

According to the IDF, a bill being advanced by the government that would ostensibly increase military conscription in the Haredi community, but ultimately enshrine blanket exemptions from military service, will not provide an adequate solution to the military’s personnel needs in the short term.

‘Knowing and ongoing mass violation of the law’

The move by police to strengthen enforcement came after strong criticism from both the military and judiciary.

IDF officials claimed in a meeting with Baharav-Miara in January that police have been systematically preventing the army from arresting draft evaders in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

“In practice, Military Police officers do not receive, as a general rule, clearance from the Israel Police to carry out operations in Haredi or mixed neighborhoods,” a brief of the meeting stated, adding that any planned IDF operation against draft evaders requires prior approval from police in the area.

Army officials also noted that according to police policy, “members of the Haredi community detained in random arrests by the police — who turn out during the detention to be deserters or evaders — are in fact released.”

In addition, a recent Times of Israel investigation found that law enforcement has taken little action against those working to circumvent the efforts to enforce conscription, such as the hardline Jerusalem Faction.

Last month, the High Court of Justice ordered the state to take “actual criminal proceedings” against Haredi draft dodgers, calling the police’s failure to arrest such people “unacceptable” and describing the situation as a “knowing and ongoing mass violation of the law.”

The court said it was issuing the orders because the government had failed to implement the court’s ruling from November 2025 that it must adopt enforcement measures against ultra-Orthodox men who do not enlist in the IDF after being sent conscription orders.

Dissolving the Knesset and reviving the exemption bill

The Haredim decided to push for the dissolution of the Knesset last week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed them that his coalition does not have a majority to pass its controversial draft exemption bill in the current Knesset, and suggested waiting until after the 2026 elections.

A preliminary vote on a bill to dissolve the Knesset is scheduled for this Wednesday.

In what is widely believed to be an effort to convince the Haredim to postpone elections until October, the draft exemption bill has been placed back on the parliamentary agenda for Wednesday, with a discussion planned in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to prepare it for the final two readings needed for it to pass into law.

Addressing reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset on Monday, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid warned coalition MKs that their voters will remember if they vote in favor of the bill.

“If an MK votes in favor of evading the IDF, his voters in the primaries should know that he is no longer a Zionist and that he is endangering their security,” he said, referencing reports that Netanyahu has been pressuring Likud MKs opposed to the bill to change their minds.

“Over the past two days, Netanyahu and his office have been applying a crazy amount of pressure on MKs from the coalition in order to convince them to support the evasion law after all. All to gain a few more days in office,” Lapid added. “We will buy billboards all over the State of Israel, and if you support this law, in every corner of the country there will be a sign with your face and underneath it will be written: ‘Supports evasion from the IDF during wartime.’”

Shortly afterwards, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded that the ultra-Orthodox community’s leaders unequivocally endorse military service for those who are not engaged in full-time Torah study as a precondition for his Religious Zionism party’s support for the legislation.

While his party is “ready for many painful compromises,” it has “a basic, principled, and moral requirement of the Haredi leadership,” he said, conditioning support for the bill on “a clear statement from the Haredi leadership [that] whoever is not studying Torah must enlist!”

“This is the minimum required so that it will be possible to move forward in this important and necessary process,” Smotrich insisted.

Senior ultra-Orthodox spiritual leaders appear to regard efforts to legislate and regulate Haredi conscription as a stalling tactic only intended to buy time, openly stating that they have no plans to allow Haredi youth to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, according to recordings of conversations aired on Channel 12 in January.

Jeremy Sharon, Emanuel Fabian and Charlie Summers contributed to this report.