UTJ threatens to bring down government unless conscription bill passed before budget
If the passage of a bill exempting Haredim from military service is not expedited, Israel will ‘go to summer elections,’ threatens United Torah Judaism chief Yitzchak Goldknopf
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"
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf warned this week that if a law largely excluding the ultra-Orthodox from IDF conscription is not passed before the 2025 state budget, it will never be passed — declaring that the controversial legislation must be given priority or the government will fall.
According to a report in the Hamodia daily on Wednesday, which is affiliated with Goldknopf’s Gur Hasidic movement, the housing minister complained during a UTJ faction meeting in the Knesset that a bill enshrining yeshiva students’ military exemptions should have been passed a long time ago, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly given excuses and postponed its advancement.
“We have two options before us: either they put off the conscription bill and we go to summer elections, or they insist on the conscription bill before the budget and the government completes its term,” Goldknopf insisted.
While cautioning that the party will not make any final decision before obtaining guidance from its rabbinic leadership, Goldknopf declared that the enlistment bill should be prioritized as a condition of the government’s continuation and that it should “be made clear to the general public” that unless it is passed before the budget, the enlistment bill “will never be enacted.”
The 2025 state budget must be passed by the end of March or the government will automatically fall, triggering early elections.
According to Hebrew press reports, at the weekly cabinet meeting earlier this week, Netanyahu indicated that the budget would be passed first. In response, Goldknopf was said to have asked why his party remained in the government.
In June, the court ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.
Under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox allies, Netanyahu has repeatedly promised a quick resolution to the issue in recent months.
Despite the prime minister’s assurances, a bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has stated that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”
The Attorney General’s Office has warned that a potential enlistment outline proposed by the government is incompatible with the court’s ruling, while Edelstein and other members of Netanyahu’s Likud party have insisted that any legislation imposes significant sanctions on Haredi who do not serve.
Goldknopf has repeatedly issued ultimatums linking the budget to the enlistment issue but has failed to follow through.
Last October, UTJ appeared to backtrack from a threat to derail government budget talks only hours after demanding that the government quickly pass a new conscription law.
Instead, the party’s rabbinic leadership reportedly instructed the party leadership to focus on a bill aimed at circumventing a High Court of Justice ruling that such financial support is illegal in cases where the father should be serving in the Israel Defense Forces but is not.
The party later issued a public warning that it would boycott all votes on coalition legislation if the bill was not advanced. However, due to opposition by coalition lawmakers, Netanyahu was forced to remove the bill from the Knesset agenda, and UTJ continued to vote with the coalition.
In December, Agudat Yisrael, Goldknopf’s faction within UTJ, threatened to oppose a key budget bill, demanding that the coalition meet their demands before they begin voting with it again.
However, Likud officials managed to head off opposition by two members of Agudat Yisrael, with MKs Yisrael Eichler and Moshe Roth staying away rather than voting against the coalition, denying what would have been a rare victory to the opposition. UTJ’s Yaakov Tessler voted with the opposition.
In a similar move, last month, Aryeh Deri, the chairman of the Haredi Shas party, warned Netanyahu that he had two months to resolve the status of yeshiva students or “we’ll go to elections.”
The following day, Shas spokesman Asher Medina walked the statement back, telling Channel 12 that his party would “not topple the right-wing government. There is no threat and no ultimatum.”
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