There might be as many as six models going around right now about how Israel and the IDF should restructure military service, including dealing with integrating the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, in the post-Oct. 7 world.
The debate was reignited last week when the IDF put out its first draft of an attempt to grow the armed forces substantially to handle new security challenges in the North, South, and West Bank. Suggestions included increasing service time substantially for both mandatory and reservist soldiers.
Notably, the plan did not address integrating the Haredi sector, and when pressed on the issue, IDF sources said that this was something for the political class to work out.
In other words, the IDF told the country: We need to grow the army immediately, and here is a way we can do that with the population sectors you have given us so far.
That was Plan Number 1.
The backup plans
Plan Number 2: Despite remaining silent or agnostic on the details of integrating Haredim into the IDF when the main plan was rolled out, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi delivered a major address on Tuesday on the need to greatly widen military service, a code for calling to integrate the Haredim (and Arab Israelis?).
He did provide details on how it could be done, but he made it clear that he and the IDF believe that in a post-Oct. 7 world, it is blatantly immoral that parts of the population continue to be exempt.
Plan Number 3: In the spring of 2023, National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz put out his plan to integrate both Haredim and Arab Israelis. His plan flags that less than 50% of the entire Israeli population (the percentage is higher among non-Haredi Jews) are currently serving and that this is a starting-point reality that must be internalized. Next, Gantz looked at the current draft picture, in which there are 70,000 non-Haredi Jews, 8,000 religious women available for national service, 40,000 Arab Israelis, and 22,000 Haredi men and women of drafting age, as well as 8,000 national religious women for national service.
The numbers are meant to convey how much is being sacrificed by not integrating all segments of the population into national service. The Haredim could be integrated into a mix of the IDF, national service, and police and rescue services. Arab Israelis could be integrated solely into national service or police and rescue services.
THE PREMISE of the Gantz plan is that the IDF and Israeli society do not actually want a massive influx of Haredim and Arab Israelis in the military.
According to this narrative, many Haredim require many more resources, training, and funding to become soldiers than do those from the country’s other sectors. Furthermore, absorbing them would also require creating a more segregated environment in the IDF, especially with respect to keeping Haredi men away from secular women.
In contrast to the models of full Haredi exemption or full integration, the Gantz plan emphasizes getting practical value from the Haredim in the context of varied and flexible forms of national service.
This would allow many Haredim to serve in their hometown communities and remain separate from secular women, thus preventing the oppression of secular women (given that much of Israeli society is already segregated).
Likewise, the IDF would probably not want such a large number of Arab Israelis until the Arab-Israeli conflict becomes tamer – something that is not on the foreseeable horizon.
Plan Number 4: Gantz rolled out his plan in the spring of 2023 in response to the idea put forth by the government’s haredi parties to formalize exemptions from military service into a Basic Law, with the hope that this would prevent further intervention by the High Court of Justice on the issue. The High Court has struck down numerous prior Knesset laws on the issue as violating constitutional principles of equality by favoring Haredim.
That plan has gone dormant for now, both because the post-Oct. 7 world is much less forgiving of such an idea and because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival on so many fronts and has likely backed off from much of his pre-Oct. 7 planned judicial overhaul.
BUT DO NOT forget this plan: In 2013-2014, Yair Lapid joined the Netanyahu government and passed a historic reform to integrate more Haredim, with close to 80% support from the population. His plan was nixed within about a year, and the Haredim were never integrated. No one should underestimate the power of inertia and the seeming need of any Israeli government for Haredim; if they do not agree to drop their exemption, the post-Oct. 7 moment could pass at some point.
Both the Lapid-Netanyahu government, which included no Haredim, and the Haredi-less Lapid-Naftali Bennett government fell within around two years or less.
Plan Number 5: Back in the spring of 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant responded to the Netanyahu government’s planned Basic Law exemption of Haredim from IDF service. He proposed a new idea that was more lenient on Haredim but gave something to the general population to dilute the inequality.
Basically, he said that there was no way the Haredim would be forced to serve and that it was not clear that the IDF wanted them, so the real solution would be to pay IDF soldiers more for their service; as such, they receive benefits that the Haredim who do not serve would not get.
No one endorsed this plan. The Haredim just wanted their plan straight up; Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich wanted to control costs, and the program would be a massive new entitlements program; and average Israelis who feel discriminated against by being forced to serve when Haredim do not saw this compensation as too weak.
This was especially true because the Haredim were getting other new benefits in other budget laws at the same time that beat or competed with whatever might be given to general Israelis serving.
No one is talking about this idea now, but the idea could be revived if the Haredim beat down the more aggressive plans and it ends up being the only remaining idea besides continuing the status quo of exemption.
Plan Number 6: Lapid’s 2013-2014 law demanded increasing the number of Haredim serving from 1,000 or less to 5,000 within only four years. It also authorized the defense minister, within four years, to draft all but 1,800 very talented Haredi yeshiva students (which would come out to around 75% serving) if the 5,000 number was not met. The plan also provided for criminal sanctions and imprisonment for draft dodgers.
Lapid’s law was not about full equality; 23,000 Haredim over the age of 22, deemed “too old,” were due to receive a full exemption, and neither was it shooting for 100% at lower ages. But it was and remains the most aggressive law on the topic.
There are hints that even in a post-Oct. 7 world, Lapid would not demand as aggressive a law going forward. He might drop criminal sanctions in favor of financial sanctions. He might endorse some aspects of Gantz’s national service idea.
However, he is not fully updating us on what he is in favor of at this moment. Taking advantage of being in the opposition, he is focusing on pressuring Gantz and Netanyahu into being more aggressive themselves.
Generally, Lapid views Gantz’s plan as well-meaning but having too many holes and taking too long, such that in practice the Haredim would slip through all the cracks, unwind the new requirements, and end up with the same result.
Gantz views Lapid’s 2013-2014 ideas as having failed and being unrealistic.
One last thing to note is that, ironically, Lapid’s law, which still demanded far less than 100% Haredi participation in the IDF, is probably what the High Court would have green-lighted, since it required, at least on its face, a major jump in enlistment.
This was hinted to by several justices in their 2017 opinions, striking the 2015 law on Haredi exemptions as having recruitment benchmarks that were too watered down.