Israeli coalition wins reprieve in military draft feud ahead of budget vote

By Steven Scheer

Israel's government has won another reprieve in a dispute over exemptions of religious Torah students from military service, with ultra-Orthodox parties ditching a demand that a new law on conscription be passed before the budget is approved this week.

Leaders of ultra-Orthodox Haredi parties in the coalition had demanded that parliament pass a new call-up law exempting full-time religious seminary students before a cabinet vote on a so-called austerity 2025 budget due on Thursday.

Without a new law, they had threatened to abstain from the budget debate, potentially crippling government finances in the middle of a war and bringing down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Both Netanyahu and his hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose religious nationalist party represents a different strand of Jewish identity, said the budget had to be passed on time, ruling out a new conscription law.

"Whoever opposes the budget will pay a price and bear full responsibility," Smotrich told a news conference on Monday, saying there was no contradiction between religious study and service in the army.

The budget includes 40 billion shekels ($10.8 billion) of spending cuts as well as tax increases.

Ultra-Orthodox parties remain adamant on a bill to ultimately exempt full-time Torah students from military service, but agreed to pull the threat to vote against the budget after winning a promise by the state to fund Haredi day care as long as the mother works.

Moshe Roth, a senior lawmaker for United Torah Judaism, one of two ultra-Orthodox parties in the government, said the parties could be satisfied with "an arrangement instead of a law" because they did not want to bring down the government.

"The budget is mostly a defence budget so therefore, the Haredim don't want to topple the government on this," he told Reuters. "We are still in the middle of a war which is not the time for elections."

The ultra-Orthodox comprise 13% of Israel's population of 10 million and are growing rapidly given high birth rates.

DESERTERS

Netanyahu needs UTJ and its sister party Shas, which together have 18 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. He has been walking a tightrope between their push for draft exemptions and demands from others in his government that wartime military needs meant exemptions for Haredim were unsustainable.

Military service in Israel is mandatory when turning 18 for both men and women, although some women opt for civil service instead. Ultra-Orthodox men studying full time in seminaries have been exempted since the state was created in 1948 and numerous attempts to conscript them have failed.

In 2022, when the coalition was formed, Netanyahu agreed to pass a new law on conscription that would have met Haredi demands, but it has been repeatedly delayed, first in a bitter battle over the justice system and later over the war.

The High Court in June ruled the state must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students, and the military said it would recruit about 3,000 ultra-Orthodox a year.

Housing minister and UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf said that without a new conscription law, seminary students who refused call-up risked being treated as deserters - a criminal offence.

With the Gaza war now in a second year and a front open in southern Lebanon, anger at the exemptions has been growing as casualties among Israeli troops have climbed to near 800.

Many Haredim fear that when young men go to the military, where they may serve with secular Israelis, they risk losing the values that form the basis of their religious identity.

"Defence is important, economy is important, health is important. But to the Jewish nation, education is important (too)," Roth said. "To not have knowledge of Torah is the worst thing in the Jewish nation."