Minister-without-portfolio and National Unity chairman MK Benny Gantz presented in a press conference on Monday a plan to involve all Israelis in either national or military service, and end the blanket exemption to ultra-Orthodox (haredi) and Arab-Israeli citizens.
The plan, called the Israeli Service Plan, which Gantz presented alongside fellow Minister-without-portfolio Gadi Eisenkot and Inbar Harosh-Giti, former head of the Defense Ministry Service Directorate and number 18 on the party’s Knesset list, is nearly identical to a plan the three prosed in May. This time, however, the two said they would put forward the plan in the form of a bill proposal, at the same time that the government put forward two bills to lengthen mandatory service for recruits, and to nearly double the number of days reservists will have to serve every year.
The bills were published for public review earlier this month. Gantz’s and Eisenkot’s strategy is to demand that the government bills be defined as temporary, while the Israeli Service Plan will become the law in the long run.
A new system for IDF service
Gantz’s, Eisenkot’s, and Harosh-Giti’s idea was to create a new system whereby all citizens whom the IDF chooses not to draft will come under the responsibility of the Defense Ministry’s Service Directorate. The military would get the first pick out of Israel’s Jewish and male Druze citizens. Israeli-Arab citizens would not go through the IDF’s selection process, but instead would head directly to the Service Directorate, which would then assign them to services such as first aid and rescue, or volunteering in welfare or inner-community organizations.
“We cannot look into the eyes of the reservists and only vote on lengthening their service; this is not an issue for the court, but for leaders,” Gantz said at the press conference.
He stressed that in the wake of the Hamas invasion on October 7, members of all sectors of Israeli society, including Arab-Israelis and haredim, raced forward to save lives. This could be indicative of a system where everyone could serve without having to give up their identity and way of life, Gantz said.
Eisenkot added, “We can choose between a historic amendment and a historic missed opportunity.” He said that their plan was the basis for discussion and would be subject to changes if other parties in the Knesset had ideas of how to improve it.
In an answer to a question by The Jerusalem Post, Eisenkot said that the war cabinet had not debated the issue, and that part of the reason he and Gantz were holding the press conference was to bring the plan into the public eye to begin a process to enshrine it as law.
The press conference came amid a public debate about the justification for the decades-long blanket exemption from IDF service for haredi men, which broke out after the government’s bills to extend mandatory and reserve duties did not address the fact that haredi men were given a blanket exemption from service, and did not propose a plan to begin recruiting soldiers from a broader pool of candidates to lessen the burden on those who already are serving.
The press conference coincided with a hearing in the Supreme Court on the legality of the haredi exemption, as the bill that enabled it already expired at the end of June last year. It also coincided with a separate debate on a bill in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) to lengthen the age of exemption for reservists by one year.
The bill is meant to preserve the current array of reservists at least until the end of 2024, as age barriers determine that if the exemption does not pass into law by February 29, thousands of men who have reached the age of 40 will be released from service.
According to Israel’s existing law, soldiers must serve in the reserves until the end of the calendar year in which they turn 40. That number is 45 for officers and 49 for specific roles deemed by the defense minister as especially necessary. On December 31, thousands of men were scheduled to become exempt from service. The Knesset on December 28 lengthened service for these reservists until the end of February and now wishes to lengthen it again until the end of 2024.
“The issue of extending service for mandatory and reserve soldiers cannot be separated from the question of haredi enlistment,” Yair Lapid, opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman said during the committee’s debate.
“The first condition for joint living is that everyone has the same rights and the same duties. There is no such thing as unity without equality. There is no such thing as unity if all of the burden – operational and economic – falls on one group in the Israeli public,” Lapid said.
Even though the committee was only debating the one-year extension for reservists and not the government’s larger plan to increase mandatory and reserve duties, Lapid addressed the latter.
“There are 63,000 haredim who are at the age of service. If 10,000 of them enlist, there will be no need to extend mandatory service. If only a quarter of haredi men aged 20-49 serve in the reserves, then reserves can be limited to one month every year. This is not happening for one reason only: political pressure,” Lapid said.
The haredi parties in the coalition, especially the Ashkenazi-haredi party United Torah Judaism (UTJ) are adamantly opposed to IDF service – and are unlikely to support any law that requires this. The Sephardic-haredi party, Shas, has expressed openness for those who do not study in yeshivot to join the IDF – but opposes any attempt to recruit yeshiva students.
At least one member of the coalition, Likud MK Tally Gotliv, said during the FADC debate on Monday that she would not support a bill that would grant sweeping exemption to any group in Israeli society, including the haredim.
Members of the Likud and the coalition’s Religious Zionist Party have expressed similar sentiments, although most said that this cannot be reached without dialogue and the agreement of the haredi community.
Yisrael Beytenu Chairman MK Avigdor Liberman said in a press conference ahead of his party’s weekly meeting on Monday that every Israeli who reaches the age of 18 should either join the military or serve in civil service. Liberman claimed that many haredim wished to join the IDF, but that their political representatives were preventing this.