Dispute Over Conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Presents New Threat to Netanyahu
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is divided
about whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be required to join the Israeli army.
March 30,
2024, 12:01 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/30/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-haredi-military-conscription.html
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing his most challenging political threat
since the start of the Gaza war because of a disagreement among members of his
coalition about whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should retain their longstanding
exemption from military service.
An unwieldy
right-wing alliance of secular and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, the coalition’s
members are divided about whether the state should continue to allow young
ultra-Orthodox men to study at religious seminaries instead of serving in the
military, as most other Jewish Israelis do. If the government abolishes the
exemption, it risks a walkout from the ultra-Orthodox lawmakers; if it lets the
exemption stand, the secular members could withdraw. Either way, the coalition
could collapse.
The
situation poses the gravest challenge to Mr. Netanyahu’s grip on power since
Hamas raided Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to invade Hamas’s stronghold in
the Gaza Strip. Criticized by many Israelis for presiding over the October
disaster, Mr. Netanyahu is trailing in the polls and faces growing calls to
resign. But until now, there were few obvious ways in which his coalition might
collapse.
The end of
the coalition would most likely lead to new elections, and polling suggests
that Mr. Netanyahu would not win.
A new
Israeli government led by centrists is unlikely to take a markedly different
approach to the war in Gaza, but it may be more open to allowing the
Palestinian leadership in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to play a bigger role
in Gaza after the war. That arrangement could create a more conducive
environment for Israel to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, which had
edged closer to sealing diplomatic ties with Israel before the war broke out.
The
ultra-Orthodox have been exempt from military service since the founding of
Israel in 1948, but as the numbers of the ultra-Orthodox have grown — and
especially in the months since the war began — so have resentment and anger
over these privileges.
The issue
came to the fore on Thursday evening when the government announced that the
coalition had not agreed on an extension to the exemption by April 1, when the
current exemption elapses. That news prompted the Supreme Court to instruct the
government, as soon as the deadline passes, to suspend special educational
subsidies that support seminary students if those students have failed to
answer their military call-ups.
The court’s
decision spurred outrage among ultra-Orthodox leaders who fear for the
financial future of their education system, which depends largely on state
subsidies, and are concerned that the funding freeze is the first step toward
mandatory military service for their community.
For now,
some ultra-Orthodox leaders have said that their parties will remain in the
coalition while they wait to see what happens.
The
standoff reflects how a decades-long battle over the character and future of
the Jewish state has become graver since Oct. 7. Secular Israelis have long
clashed with the ultra-Orthodox minority, known in Hebrew as Haredim, about how
religious the state should be and how much autonomy the Haredim should have.
Now, a
growing number of soldiers, including those from religious backgrounds, are
returning from the front lines in Gaza and questioning why they should be
risking their lives for a minority that receives vast educational subsidies,
contributes less to the economy than other parts of society and mostly does not
serve in the military.
Significant
sections of the Haredi public have displayed a greater sense of shared destiny
with mainstream Israelis since the attack, with some expressing greater support
for the army and a small minority showing more interest in joining it. Roughly
1,000 Haredi men currently serve voluntarily in the military — less than 1
percent of all soldiers — but more than 2,000 Haredim sought to join the
military in the first 10 weeks of the war, according to military statistics.
But the
Haredi leadership remains deeply opposed to mandatory military service, fearing
that it might disrupt their conservative way of life, which is centered around
intensive Torah study in seminaries, or yeshivas.
“If a
yeshiva student has to leave the yeshiva to be drafted, for whatever the
reason, then we will not stay in the government,” said Moshe Roth, a Haredi
lawmaker.
“This is a
make it or break it,” he said.
“The only
way to protect the Torah and to keep it alive, as it has been for the last
3,500 years, is by having yeshivas,” Mr. Roth added.
.
The dispute
is rooted in decisions made in the years surrounding Israel’s founding, when
the country’s secular leadership promised autonomy and privileges to the
ultra-Orthodox minority in exchange for their support for a largely secular
national project. As well as exemption from the draft, the Haredim are allowed
to run their own autonomous education system.
When their
numbers of the Haredim were relatively small, their privileges mattered less to
the Israeli mainstream. But as their population has swelled to more than one
million people, roughly 13 percent of Israel’s population — up from 40,000, or
5 percent, in 1948 — even many observant Jews who serve in the military have
expressed resentment.
The
exemption has prompted numerous legal challenges, the most significant of which
was upheld by a Supreme Court decision in 2017. Its implementation has been
postponed repeatedly to allow successive governments to find a compromise, and
the latest deferment will elapse on Monday.
In
practice, few expect military police officers to start searching Haredi
neighborhoods to arrest seminary students who should be serving in the army.
The army is not logistically prepared to absorb large numbers of highly
conservative men who, for religious reasons, will refuse to serve in units
alongside women.
The Supreme
Court has also given the government another month to reach a middle ground
acceptable to both its religious and secular members. Officials and lawmakers
say a compromise is under discussion in which a few thousand seminary dropouts
would be required to serve, but not those still studying.
“There is
an understanding that something should be done, especially after Oct. 7,” said
Danny Danon, a secular lawmaker in the governing coalition who supports ending
the exemption. “We respect religion, and tradition, but at the same time, we
realize that we have to change the current situation,” he added.
The threat
of a financial shortfall for Haredi schools has injected a greater sense of
urgency into the negotiations.
The court
order did not say how many students would be affected by the freeze, and Mr.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on whether the government would enforce
the order.
But court
documents suggested that up to roughly 60,000 student subsidies could be at
risk — a sizable part of the seminary system’s budget.
Dozens of
yeshivas “won’t last if they don’t have money from the government,” said Yanki
Farber, a prominent Haredi commentator.
Still, the
Haredi leadership could yet decide to stay in the coalition: It can wield more
influence inside a right-wing coalition than by triggering elections that could
be won by a more centrist and secular alliance in which it might play no part.
While still
in government, Haredi leaders could press their cabinet colleagues to find
workarounds to their funding shortfall, Mr. Farber said.
“It’s a
very big disaster for the Haredim,” Mr. Farber said. But, he added, “at the
moment they have much more to lose by leaving than staying.”
Patrick
Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied
territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and
previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley
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