By Pesach Benson • 27 April, 2025
Jerusalem, 27 April, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Israel’s High Court of Justice issued a conditional order Sunday demanding the government explain why it has failed to properly draft and enforce conscription orders for Haredi Orthodox yeshiva students, raising tensions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
The order, responding to petitions by the Movement for Quality Government, the Free Israel Movement, and the Defensive Wall for Democracy Forum, shifts the burden onto the government to justify its actions. The government must submit its response by June 24.
“The court orders that the respondents appear and give reasons why they will not issue or continue to issue draft orders… in a scope appropriate to the needs of the army as presented from time to time by professional elements in the army,” the judges wrote. They further demanded the state explain “why they will not act to enforce the orders… by taking effective personal enforcement measures” against those who failed to report.
The petitioners argued that despite the High Court’s 2024 ruling invalidating blanket exemptions for Haredi yeshiva students, conscription rates remain negligible. Since that decision, the IDF has issued 18,915 draft notices to ultra-Orthodox men, but only about 2 percent have enlisted. Tens of thousands more eligible students have yet to receive draft notices, and little has been done to enforce orders already issued.
The Movement for Quality Government welcomed the latest court order as “a significant step” toward ensuring equal responsibility for national service. “The situation where tens of thousands of eligible young men avoid service must end,” the organization said.
The military, still strained from the ongoing war in multiple sectors, faces a critical manpower shortage, needing approximately 12,000 new recruits, including 7,000 combat soldiers. The IDF has stressed the need to integrate more Haredi recruits and is planning new service frameworks in the Air Force, Intelligence, and combat support units. The goal is to recruit 4,800 Haredi men annually, a figure expected to rise over time.
Defense Minister Yisrael Katz has asked the military to reevaluate its recruitment plans for the Haredi community. Army officials have also called for legislative changes, including extending regular service to 36 months and imposing sanctions on those who refuse to enlist, to ease the burden on reserve forces.
However, the court’s order has sparked political anxiety. Shas party chairman Aryeh Deri, a key coalition partner, has warned that the arrest of even a single yeshiva student could provoke a crisis. “The moment that, God forbid, a single incident occurs in which the military police enter a yeshiva or a house and arrest even one yeshiva student—Shas will not be able to remain in the government,” Deri said earlier this month in an interview with the Haderech newspaper.
Nevertheless, Deri stressed his commitment to coalition stability. “There is no other coalition on the horizon, and this is a very sensitive period for the country—war, reconstruction, regional challenges. To open crises now over secondary issues would be irresponsible,” he said.
The Netanyahu government is under increasing pressure from its ultra-Orthodox partners to pass legislation formalizing draft exemptions, but any such move would likely run afoul of the High Court’s demands for equal application of the law.
Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens. However, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and the country’s leading rabbis agreed to a status quo that deferred military service for Haredi men studying in yeshivot, or religious institutions. At the time, no more than several hundred men were studying in yeshivot.
However, the Orthodox community has grown significantly since Israel’s founding. In January 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Haredim are Israel’s fastest-growing community and projected it would constitute 16% of the population by the end of the decade. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the number of yeshiva students exceeded 138,000 in 2021.
