Stymied on conscription, Haredi party declares itself free from coalition discipline
UTJ official says party ‘will not bring down the government’ but will vote independently unless progress is made on exempting yeshiva students from military service
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Frustrated by the government’s failure to pass a law exempting yeshiva students from conscription, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party has indicated that it will no longer consider itself bound by coalition discipline.
According to Hebrew media reports, following a faction meeting on Wednesday, the party’s MKs decided to pursue an independent course during the upcoming summer legislative session, which starts on May 4, if no progress is made on advancing the controversial legislation.
“There are two ways to leave a coalition. There is the option to leave by slamming the door, and there is the option to leave little by little. We are choosing the second way,” a senior party official told the Maariv daily.
“Right now we are not committed to coalition discipline, but we will not bring down the government,” the official added, linking the move his party has taken to the enlistment issue as well as the reinstitution of daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox men who do not serve in the military.
Rather than voting automatically according to the coalition’s position, each issue will be brought before the party’s rabbinic leadership for consultation, Avraham Friend, a political reporter for the ultra-Orthodox news site Behadrei Haredim, wrote on X.
During Wednesday’s meeting, members of the party’s Degel HaTorah faction, which represents the so-called “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodoxy, railed against lawmakers from the Religious Zionism and Likud parties who “are taking part in incitement against the Haredi public” on the enlistment issue, Channel 14 reported.
Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have been pushing for the passage of legislation regulating military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community, after the High Court ruled in June last year that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal since they were not based in law.
Despite the prime minister’s assurances to his ultra-Orthodox allies, the legislation, scorned by critics as an “evasion law,” has long been held up in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) has pledged that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”
Blanket draft exemptions for the Haredi public have become exceedingly unpopular even within the coalition, in light of the IDF’s manpower squeeze amid the ongoing war and the strain it has put on Israeli society.
Both UTJ’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction and Shas, the coalition’s other ultra-Orthodox party, previously threatened to bring down the government by opposing the 2025 state budget over the enlistment issue — before backing down and voting in favor.
Following the budget vote late last month, the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site reported that the Gur Hasidic rebbe instructed UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf to sign on to an alternate plan to pressure Netanyahu, which was advanced by Degel HaTorah.
That plan would have seen the entire UTJ party threaten to withdraw from the government unless it passes an exemption bill within three months.
In an effort to preempt such an ultimatum, Netanyahu reportedly spoke with senior Haredi rabbis linked to UTJ — calling Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the leader of the Belz Hasidic movement, the second-largest Hasidic sect in Israel; and Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, a prominent leader of the “Lithuanian” stream.
According to Kikar Hashabbat, in his calls with Rabbis Rokeach and Hirsch, Netanyahu argued that the timeframe was impractical and that a law regulating enlistment could not be passed that fast.
Following the calls, Rokeach and Hirsch met at the home of Degel HaTorah spiritual leader Rabbi Dov Lando in Bnei Brak to settle on a new approach for the party. According to media reports, they decided that no public letter would be sent, with the rabbis instead choosing to negotiate with the government behind the scenes.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life, and fear that those who enlist will be secularized.
However, the exemptions have been met with widespread opposition from Israelis who perform mandatory military service, at a time of war when hundreds of soldiers have been killed and hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilized.
The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.
Currently, approximately 70,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted. The IDF has sent out 18,915 initial draft orders to members of the Haredi community in several waves since July 2024, but according to Lt. Col. Avigdor Dickstein, head of the Haredi branch of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, only 232 of those who have received orders have enlisted — 57 of them in combat roles.
Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Dickstein indicated that despite the army aiming to recruit 4,800 Haredi men during the 2024-2025 draft cycle, only 1,721 have enlisted thus far.
“There is an upward trend here, but it is not sufficient and does not correspond to the very large operational need,” he said.
Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics presented to the committee on Wednesday showed that 24.4 percent, or 14,035, out of 57,424 18-year-olds who will be eligible to be drafted this year are ultra-Orthodox — a figure that is expected to rise to 27.2% by 2030.
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