In a sharply worded decision issued after a scheduled High Court of Justice hearing was canceled amid the escalating war with Iran, a five-justice panel signaled mounting impatience with the government’s handling of enforcement against eligible ultra-Orthodox (haredi) men who do not report for military service – and ordered the state to file a far more complete update by March 22.
“In these pressing times, today’s hearing was canceled,” the court wrote. “But the need to enforce the obligation of military enlistment is steadily increasing.”
The decision – signed by Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg alongside Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, David Mintz, Yael Willner, and Ofer Grosskopf – said the state had provided only a “small measure” of what the court demanded in an earlier directive, leaving the justices without the factual and legal foundation required to decide pending requests tied to alleged noncompliance with prior rulings.
The ruling landed as Israel’s home front has been rattled by Iranian missile barrages and related escalation on multiple fronts, forcing institutions underground and upending routine governance – the same security constraints the court cited in canceling Sunday’s session.
At the center of the dispute is the state’s obligation to translate the court’s prior directives on haredi enlistment into real enforcement, not only through criminal proceedings but also through civil-economic measures that remove benefits and other incentives linked, directly or indirectly, to continued draft avoidance.
The panel noted that its January 25 decision was intended to ensure that, ahead of a hearing in contempt-related proceedings, the state would lay out a coherent factual and legal framework, including “all benefits” tied to draft evasion and the professional measures believed likely to be most effective.
Instead, the court said, it received an update that “does not satisfy,” with glaring gaps.
On civil-economic enforcement measures, the state did not present the relevant factual and legal basis for any of the steps on the table, the justices wrote.
And on the criminal-enforcement track, they added, “The main thing is missing from the book.”
Court calls police conduct 'highly troubling'
In one of the most pointed passages, the court said the state’s account of how the police are conducting themselves on the enforcement issue – and how police work is coordinated with military enforcement bodies – was “highly troubling” and did not match what the court had already determined in the underlying judgment.
“The statements in the update notice regarding the police’s conduct… and the working interface between the police authorities and the military enforcement bodies are highly troubling,” the panel wrote, adding that “every effort” must be made to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
The court ordered the state to submit a completed update as soon as possible, no later than March 22, saying it expects the intervening period to be used to make “considerable progress.”
The justices underscored why, according to the state’s own update, even though the time allotted in the earlier judgment had already elapsed – and no extension request was filed – there has still been no progress in formulating government policy.
The court said a new hearing date will be scheduled as soon as possible, subject to security constraints.
The latest decision sits inside a longer-running legal and political battle over the state’s enforcement obligations following the collapse of the blanket exemption regime for yeshiva students.
In previous rulings, including under Sohlberg’s pen, the court made clear that once statutory deferments lapse, the obligation to enlist revives – and that enforcement cannot remain theoretical.