The High Court of Justice ruled on Monday that the IDF is under a legal duty to implement, as far as possible, equal opportunity for women and men in access to combat roles, and in a split operative outcome ordered the military to begin its long-delayed pilot integration of women into the maneuvering armored corps by the November 2026 draft cycle.
In a unanimous ruling on principle, Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg, with Justices Dafna Barak-Erez and Ruth Ronen, held that the governing statutes establish equality as the starting point for military service, including combat service, and permit excluding women only in exceptional cases where that is required by “the nature and character” of the specific role. The court also held that the burden of proving such an exception rests on the military.
The petitions, first filed in 2020, were brought by female candidates and service members seeking equal access to screening and service in elite units, including the infantry and maneuvering armor. Over more than five and a half years of litigation, the justices said, the original petitioners’ individual circumstances had largely fallen away, and the case now presented a principled question.
Sohlberg wrote that the case turned on statutory provisions that make clear women must be allowed to serve in every role, including combat roles, unless the army can show that exclusion is compelled by the role itself.
Sohlberg also stressed that the petitioners were not seeking lowered standards or special accommodations, but only the same opportunity to screen and serve under the same professional thresholds applied to men.
At the same time, the court stopped short of granting all of the broader relief the petitioners sought. Sohlberg accepted the IDF’s use of pilot models as a lawful and proportionate means of moving toward fuller equality, but warned that such pilots are only a temporary measure and not a permanent substitute for equality itself.
Barak-Erez, joined by Ronen, said the court should convert the remaining conditional order into an absolute order requiring the maneuvering armored corps pilot to open no later than the November 2026 draft cycle.
Major developments inside the IDF
The ruling traces major developments inside the military since the petitions were filed. The state initially defended a gradual process, saying the chief of staff had appointed a professional team to examine women’s integration into additional combat posts, including elite units. By mid-2022, that process had produced recommendations that all combat roles already staffed by women, along with several new roles, be formally opened to women, while pilots would be launched in Unit 669, Yahalom, and an infantry mobility company. The military also said it would consider opening the maneuver armor branch to women only after completing its earlier border-defense tank trial.
The original framework also conditioned participation in those pilots on physiological threshold requirements derived from a model developed by the military team.
Petitioners attacked that model as a barrier under the guise of objectivity. The state later reported that the chief of staff had canceled those thresholds as gatekeeping conditions, instead using the model only as a supporting tool and screening women by the same standards applied to men in the special units trials.
The case changed further after a conditional order issued in June 2023, when the High Court demanded that the state explain why women should not be integrated, on a trial basis, into infantry mobility or mortar roles in maneuvering infantry brigades, why they should not be allowed into maneuvering armor in light of the successful border-defense tank process, and why additional elite and special units should not be opened in parallel with the 669 and Yahalom pilots.
Then came the war. The ruling notes that after October 7, 2023, the litigation was delayed several times because the relevant military officials were occupied with wartime matters. The IDF later told the court that, despite the burden of war, most previously approved pilots would continue or open as planned, but the maneuvering armor pilot would be postponed first to November 2025 and later again to November 2026 because of wartime constraints.
The justices also reviewed the mixed results of the pilots underway. In Yahalom, the state reported that 10 of 14 women admitted to the first cycle completed training and were already participating in operational activity, with two going on to the officers’ course. In Unit 669, two female candidates began training after the first women’s tryouts, but both later dropped out.
In Sayeret Matkal, the state reported that one woman who passed all screening stages began the first trial cycle in December 2024, and another was expected to enlist in August 2026 after passing selection. A separate infantry mobility experiment was halted in May 2025 after the army concluded that the women in the pilot had not met the required physical and combat fitness thresholds.
The court said that, notwithstanding remaining issues, the military had made dramatic changes since 2020 and had substantially advanced compliance with the law. It therefore closed the case with a dual message: a unanimous declaration that the IDF is legally bound to pursue equal opportunity for women in combat roles and may exclude them only on a role-specific, evidence-based basis; and a majority order requiring the long-promised pilot for women in maneuvering armor to begin by the November 2026 enlistment cycle. The state was also ordered to pay NIS 40,000 in costs to the petitioners.