The IDF does not yet know how many draft orders to haredi citizens it plans to send out on Sunday morning, IDF representatives said in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting on Wednesday morning.
The meeting was coined an "urgent" by committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud), after the IDF announced on Tuesday that it would begin sending out draft orders on Sunday. The IDF representatives, head of the IDF's personnel planning branch Brig.-Gen. Shai Tayeb and Brig.-Gen. Relli Margalit from the IDF's Operations Branch, said that the orders on Sunday would target haredi men that they believe to have a high potential to actually serve, and who would not avoid the orders or be found incapable. But they could not say exactly how many orders they would send out, nor what the criteria was in the choice to whom to send.
The IDF officials said in the meeting that their goal was to draft 3,000 haredim in the coming year, in addition to the approximately 1,800 haredim that already serve. IDF representatives in earlier meetings said that they would at first target haredim who either were listed as workers, or had other indications that they were not full-time yeshiva students. But members of Knesset, mainly from the opposition, argued that the IDF did not have the authority to make such distinctions, which they said were discriminatory.
"I do not understand what was so urgent to announce yesterday that thousands of draft orders would be sent to haredim, when today it becomes apparent that there is no plan and no numbers," Edelstein said during the discussion.
The exchanges in the committee reflected tensions between officials in the prime minister's office, who are pushing for concessions to haredim in order not to destabilize the government, and members of the Knesset, including from the coalition, who are pushing for a broader haredi draft to meet the IDF's manpower needs while minimizing an increase of the burden on those who are already serving.
Edelstein and other committee MKs on Wednesday repeated earlier claims that they would not hurry to approve a separate bill that would lengthen mandatory service from 32 to 36 months, unless the IDF provided a detailed plan for the increasing recruitment of haredim into the IDF.
No room to budge
Edelstein is concerned that opposition MKs will be unwilling to compromise on the haredi draft bill. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that he would only pass a bill that received support from at least parts of the opposition, and the opposition, therefore, has the power at the moment to kill the bill and prevent it from passing. This would leave in place the existing law, which necessitates drafting all military-age haredim, and in turn could lead to mass protests and possibly the collapse of the government.
Channel 12 reported on Wednesday evening that Netanyahu and Edelstein had met and discussed merging the bill to extend mandatory service with the haredi draft bill, with the goal being to force the approval of MKs who support the former but not the latter, such as United Right chairman MK Gideon Sa'ar and his party's three other MKs. A spokesperson for Edelstein denied the report.
Later on Wednesday, a "senior defense official," which usually refers Gallant, was quoted by Kikar Hashabat reporter Yishai Cohen as saying, "The age of bills intended to pass time are over, the new draft bill will have to include real [numerical] draft goals, and thousands of haredim in combat [units]. We know all of the methods of the past decade to play with the wording in order for there not to really be a haredi draft. This time there will also be a clear and unequivocal law, the games are over."
Edelstein responded in a post on X by calling the comments a "breath of fresh air" and invited the "senior official" to present it in the FADC.