All meetings on the controversial haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription bill were canceled on Sunday from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s agenda this coming week, setting back advances on developing the law.
The first discussion to present the outline of the newly updated bill had been slated for Monday at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC), after a previous postponement last week.
“We were told by the Prime Minister’s Office to wait, that there’s no green light yet to distribute it,” MK Boaz Bismuth’s (Likud) office told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, following the announcement that the committee meetings had been canceled.
Bismuth attempting to advance 'draft-dodging law,' MK Elazar Stern says
Opposition MKs sharply criticized the decision to cancel the meetings, claiming that it was only a method to delay advancing the bill.
MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid), a member of the FADC, told the Post on Sunday that Bismuth is attempting to advance “a draft-dodging law, not a conscription law.”
“The discussions on the draft-dodging law have been postponed once again, because [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu understands that even Likud voters and his own coalition have had enough of the haredi draft-dodging. They realize that the law Bismuth is bringing forward is a draft-dodging law, not a conscription law,” Stern said.
Stern then referred to the Military Advocate-General Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi’s recent resignation as a reason for the postponement of the meetings of the draft law. Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote in her resignation letter on Friday that she had approved leaking a video to N12 News of Israeli soldiers reportedly sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee.
“[Netanyahu] wants to take advantage of the serious issue that was exposed in the Military Advocate General’s Office, and he believes that afterward it will be easier for him to pass the draft-dodging law; he’s wrong. We won’t allow it, and neither will Likud and Religious Zionism voters,” Stern stated.
Bismuth had been working on the new outline of the bill since he became chairperson of the FADC in July.
His appointment to the role followed MK Yuli Edelstein’s (Likud) ousting from the position, who had been working to develop a draft bill to enforce haredi conscription to the IDF. The two haredi parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, both resigned from the government in July following the fallout in negotiations over the mandatory army service for haredim bill.
Last week, N12 reported that a leaked version of Bismuth’s outline showed significant changes to Edelstein’s bill, reverting to previous versions that failed to enforce haredi conscription into the IDF.