Bill approved for final Knesset readings would freeze Haredi enlistment for at least 7 months

In the most contentious coalition step to date to broadly exempt ultra-Orthodox young men from IDF conscription, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Sunday approved a bill for its final readings in Knesset that will have the practical effect of freezing ultra-Orthodox enlistment to the IDF for at least some seven months.

The bill, which is considerably more far-reaching than previous iterations, gives the tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men currently deemed to be draft dodgers immunity from arrest until November 30. Another clause makes the legislation applicable to Haredi men who come of military age after the law comes into effect as well, meaning, they too will be immune to arrest for draft dodging and will have little incentive to enlist after receiving conscription orders.

In addition, the bill freezes criminal proceedings already in place against current Haredi draft dodgers; makes oversight over the granting of immunity to such people practically impossible; and removes the ability to financially punish ultra-Orthodox yeshiva deans and staff who make false declarations regarding the eligibility of their students for arrest immunity.

And although the bill states that it will expire on November 30, Basic Law: The Knesset stipulates that legislation expiring in the first three months of a new Knesset, as this legislation will, remains in force for another three months, meaning the freeze on Haredi enlistment will last at least seven months if the new legislation is passed into law by the Knesset this week.

Before the committee approved the bill, the committee’s legal adviser warned that it would be discriminatory, violating the principle of equality before the law, while the Knesset’s legal adviser stated that the way the bill has been legislated is “illegitimate” after the measure was dramatically changed from the original text of the bill.

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“Legislation that exempts in practice a certain population from its obligations under the law… does not withstand constitutional tests, is incompatible with the principle of equality before the law, and amounts to unlawful discrimination,” an opinion paper written by the committee’s legal team stated.

The coalition is aiming to have the legislation passed into law before the Knesset dissolves at the end of this week ahead of elections on October 27. The objections raised by the committee’s legal advisers mean the High Court, whose powers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is seeking to drastically curtail, would be likely to strike it down.

The coalition has argued that the controversial bill is necessary because, it claims, arrests of Haredi men who have failed to report for conscription after receiving draft orders are causing a reduction in motivation among ultra-Orthodox men to enlist.

And Shas MK Yinon Azoulay asserted during Sunday’s committee hearing that Haredi men not studying in a yeshiva would still be subject to arrest, and that the revocation of some welfare benefits from draft dodgers due to recent High Court decisions would remain in place.

However, opposition MKs in the committee denounced the law for discriminating against the rest of the Jewish public, with Yesh Atid MK Meir Cohen saying it “spits in the face of soldiers,” while his party colleague and fellow committee member MK Moshe Turpaz called the bill “a desecration of God’s name.”

The bill is one component of an agreement between the ultra-Orthodox parties and Netanyahu to preserve ultra-Orthodox support for key coalition bills being pushed through the Knesset before it is dissolved and elections called at the end of this week.

Ultra-Orthodox parties have sought to preserve military service exemptions following a 2024 High Court ruling that found them unconstitutional, leading to some state benefits being curtailed. As of today, tens of thousands of Haredi yeshiva students are considered draft dodgers and are subject to arrest.

Although very few Haredi draft dodgers have actually been arrested, the small number of draft evaders who have been arrested and put in military prisons has caused the ultra-Orthodox parties and the coalition a severe political headache, prompting the new legislation to freeze such arrests.

The temporary immunity bill will likely be brought for its back-to-back second and third readings in the Knesset plenum later this week.

Under the terms of the legislation, an unmarried yeshiva student must study 40 hours a week and a married student 45 hours a week to gain immunity from arrest for violating conscription orders.

The defense minister will issue a list of yeshivas registered to confer the immunity, which will be approved by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Critically, the legislation will apply not only to the tens of thousands of haredi men already deemed to be legally in violation of their obligation to enlist, but to men who will only receive conscription orders after the law comes into effect.

“This means that the bill does not merely provide a static ‘snapshot’ of the population of yeshiva students who have, to date, unlawfully failed to report for a fitness assessment or for military service. Rather, it goes a step further by extending this mechanism prospectively to future conscripts who, in the future, will fail to report for a fitness assessment or for military service,” the committee’s legal advisory team wrote in their opinion paper.

The bill not only gives immunity from arrest to Haredi draft dodgers yet to be arrested, it freezes criminal proceedings against those who have already been arrested. Such criminal sanctions remain in effect for the general population, however.

And the legislation makes enforcing the immunity arrangement extremely difficult, meaning that it will be almost impossible to stop ultra-Orthodox men who do not meet the criteria for immunity from enjoying that benefit.

Yeshiva deans and rabbis who fraudulently state that a student is studying for the requisite number of hours cannot be financially sanctioned. And the new legislation relies on an inspection system supposed to have been established in 2014 but which has never been set up.

The opinion paper submitted by the committee’s legal advisory team before the committee approved the bill for its final reading stated that the legislation as a whole would therefore create a “sectoral exemption” from the obligations of Israel’s military service law.

This would create an arrangement that “exempts a specific group from the obligation to abide by the instructions of the law” without any provisions balancing the injury to equality before the law that might increase ultra-Orthodox enlistment, the opinion paper continued.

The assertions of the legal advisory team will significantly hamper the chances of the legislation passing judicial review in the High Court of Justice.

Additionally, Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik described the process by which the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee drafted the legislation as “illegitimate.”

The legislation to freeze arrests is based on the government’s so-called ultra-Orthodox enlistment law, which would have reinstated blanket exemptions for Haredi yeshiva students and which the committee debated for months.

The law had already passed its first reading but could not be advanced through its final readings due to opposition inside the coalition to the bill.

The new version of the legislation that freezes arrests of draft dodgers is in theory based on that original bill, but much of the original text was deleted in order to just pass the provisions regarding arrests.

The Knesset House Committee heard the arguments of opposition MKs to the process early Sunday morning, where Afik voicing her strong objections, and ultimately approved the bill for its final approval in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee later in the day.

“When the plenum approves a bill in its first reading and then it is substantially changed in its preparation for its second and third reading, this is not a legitimate bill. You cannot take one small leaf from the tree of a bill… and turn it into the principal,” Afik said in the House Committee.

The violation of proper legislative procedure is something of which the High Court also takes a dim view, and can be cause itself to invalidate legislation.

Calls for Haredi conscription have mounted as Israel has fought wars on multiple fronts since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, while facing a growing manpower shortage. The IDF has repeatedly said it urgently needs 12,000 more recruits, and Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has reportedly warned ministers that the army will “collapse in on itself” if it does not get more manpower.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted.

Amid its end-of-term legislative blitz, the coalition also intends to pass a quasi-constitutional Basic Law establishing Torah study as a “foundational value” of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

The latest version of the law, approved in the Knesset House Committee on Thursday, no longer explicitly places Torah study on par with military service. But opposition lawmakers have claimed that since the law would make Torah study the only value explicitly enshrined in a Basic Law, it effectively elevates Torah study above all other national values.