Ultra-Orthodox party backs down from threat to tank budget over IDF exemption bill
United Torah Judaism pushes to postpone budget vote until law passes to entrench Haredi non-service in army, then changes course to pursue daycare subsidies
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"
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party appeared to backtrack, at least temporarily, from a threat to derail government budget talks on Monday afternoon — hours after demanding that the government postpone a cabinet meeting on the issue and first pass a law maintaining the widespread exemption of Haredi yeshiva students from military service.
According to Channel 12, the leading rabbis who set policy for UTJ instructed the party leadership to instead focus, in the meantime, on the issue of daycare subsidies for ultra-Orthodox children, following pushback from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has ordered the payments halted, arguing that the government is legally barred from funding daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who are obligated to perform military service but are not doing so. The issue has been a sore point for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community, which typically has large families but low incomes.
In June, the High Court of Justice ruled that there is no legal basis for the decades-long practice of exempting Haredi men from the military draft. A bill that seeks to regulate the issue is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that it will only pass if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
In an apparent indication of the party’s change in direction, UTJ announced that MK Yisrael Eichler had prepared a bill that states that if just one family member is employed, that would qualify the family for state-funded daycare for young children.
In a statement, the party demanded that the coalition advance Eichler’s bill through all three readings necessary to become law as quickly as possible.
Netanyahu had previously assured the Haredim that there would be an agreement on a framework for the army exemption bill before the cabinet votes on the state budget this Thursday.
However, as the Knesset began its winter session on Monday, no progress had been reported, prompting UTJ chairman Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf to demand that Netanyahu postpone cabinet discussion of the budget in order to deal with the military draft issue first.
However, both Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich insisted in Monday’s cabinet meeting that “the state budget must be passed on time, in accordance with the principles of the budget that have already been agreed upon,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Earlier this month, Goldknopf threatened to bolt the coalition if the exemption bill is not passed before the 2025 state budget comes up for approval. The seven-MK UTJ’s exit from the coalition would not topple the government but would leave it extremely vulnerable, with a bare majority of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
Failure to pass the budget by March 31 would result in the automatic dissolution of the government and early elections.
Addressing the issue during his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Smotrich slammed what he described as “irresponsible statements by coalition officials who threaten to oppose the state budget until the conscription law is approved.”
Anybody opposing the budget “will pay a price,” Smotrich warned, calling on the Haredi leadership to “act in a real way to help the war effort and recruit many thousands of members of the ultra-Orthodox community to the IDF and the security forces.”
Smotrich also told his party colleagues that Religious Zionism would not back a version of the exemption bill that doesn’t herald a “significant change” in army draft policy for Haredim.
Wading into the fray, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehufit party, took a different approach, arguing that the Haredim need to serve, but “I don’t think coercion will help.”
There were also rumbles from within Netanyahu’s party, with MK Moshe Saada saying that he and fellow Likud MK Dan Illouz would vote against the exemption bill in its current form, which is also opposed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, while Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Edelstein told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily that he was “not changing my position.”
“The law must be a real law that fully meets the needs of the IDF,” Edelstein insisted, adding that he was “determined to pass only a real law.”
Minister-without-Portfolio Gideon Sa’ar also came out against the bill, telling reporters in the Knesset that he would only support a law “that makes significant changes to the current situation and provides for the needs of the IDF.”
Addressing the issue at his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid insisted that “the disgrace must be stopped” and vowed to fight against the “embarrassing” bill.
The government, he charged, is betraying those in the fighting forces with a “shirkers law.”
Elsewhere in the opposition, Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman demanded “one clear law: one nation, one draft,” while National Unity chairman Benny Gantz called for a military service outline that will “impose personal sanctions on anyone who is not included in the exemption quotas and does not serve.”
Monday’s intra-coalition tensions came the day after another ultra-Orthodox coalition party, Shas, boycotted a vote on several bills in the Ministerial Committee on Legislation to protest the government’s failure to advance the yeshiva student exemption bill.
“We are abstaining from voting because of the government’s failure to pass laws that are important to Shas in particular and the ultra-Orthodox public in general,” Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur of Shas was quoted as saying in Hebrew media reports.
“We cannot continue as if everything is as usual, when we receive nothing from the government,” he declared, adding that his party had not ruled out voting against the coalition in the future.
While Hebrew press reports said that both Shas and United Torah Judaism were involved in the boycott, a source told The Times of Israel that only Shas had declined to vote with the rest of the committee.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
