A meeting to discuss updated sections of the controversial haredi (ultra-Orthadox) conscription law took place on Tuesday at the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, with a specific focus on the issue of the exemption age within the framework of the bill.
The meeting wrapped up three days of heated back-to-back discussions on the bill, which took place on Sunday and Monday, in addition to the Tuesday meeting.
Reservist representatives and MKs expressed their sense of urgency regarding reaching a law that would enforce haredi conscription to the IDF, as the military continues to suffer from a shortage in human resources amid the ongoing war.
The Tuesday meeting opened up a discussion for various opinions to be presented regarding lowering the age of exemption, which currently stands at 26.
Representatives from the Labor Ministry, Finance Ministry, and Justice Ministry argued that a higher exemption age does not lead to increased haredi enlistment and that it harms the labor market, causing economic damage.
Brig.-Gen. Shai Tayeb, head of the IDF Planning and Human Resources Division, explained that "23% of this year’s enlistees were aged 23 and above, and 9% were aged 22 to 23.”
He therefore said that he agreed that the exemption age should remain at 26.
The meetings on the draft law follow the appointment of MK Boaz Bismuth (Likud) as chairperson of the committee.
Bismuth replaced MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) as the committee’s chair following the controversy surrounding the negotiations regarding Edelstein’s haredi law proposal, which led to the departure of two haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, from the government in July.
While Edelstein was working on his outline of the bill, he had said repeatedly that his committee had “cleaned the slate” on the previous bill, which was widely believed to be irrelevant following Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Bismuth has now picked up the work on the bill, proposing various revisions.
In Monday’s discussion, MKs expressed criticism for the marathon of committee meetings on the bill.
'Not really meant to advance enlistment'
MK Sharon Nir (Yisrael Beytenu) said that the marathon discussions “are not really meant to advance enlistment; they are meant to pass the state budget. The essence is legislation on draft evasion.”
“If everything we’ve done doesn’t address strong sanctions [on draft dodgers], then after 40 discussions, it’s a reversal, because the issue of sanctions and enforcement is not being considered. It’s simply throwing all the discussions away,” she said.
“Anyone who does not enlist in the IDF must face sanctions: no yeshiva funding, no dormitory discounts, no property tax discounts, nothing,” she continued.
The committee’s legal advisor, Attorney Miri Frenkel-Shor, objected to such a claim that progress on the bill was being reversed.
"We are not reversing the discussions,” she said. “When we discussed the bill, we dealt with the major issues. The sections that are lighter were left for follow-up discussions. We are not starting everything from scratch.”
Last week on Wednesday, MK Efrat Rayten (the Democrats) said that she had examined the sections Bismuth proposed and compared them to Edelstein’s outline.
She said that she came to the conclusion that Bismuth’s sections of the draft were entirely different from Edelstein’s outline on the conscription bill, which was “worked on for a year and a half” and meant to “reflect all the discussions we had here.”