A bill that would shield Haredi draft dodgers from financial sanctions is exposing cracks in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
The Haredi parties insist on exemptions for their constituents, which are opposed by both right- and left-wing lawmakers as unfair, particularly during a war.
The fault line between the two sides made headlines on Tuesday after it emerged that the coalition may lack the necessary votes to pass the legislation. The bill follows a High Court of Justice ban on some state subsidies for Haredi families whose men are draft dodgers.
Haredi politicians from the United Torah Judaism party have threatened to stop voting with the coalition unless the bill passes, Israel Hayom reported. This could lead to the coalition’s collapse and early elections, for example if the coalition fails to pass a budget.
On Tuesday, lawmakers Ohad Tal and Moshe Solomon of the Religious Zionism Party declined to say where they stood on the issue. Their statement, in which they said only that they would not comment on the issue publicly, followed reports that they oppose the bill, according to Israel Hayom. If they don’t vote for the bill, which is being prepared for a preliminary reading at the Knesset, it may lack the 61 votes necessary to pass.
Several Likud Knesset members, including Yuli Edelstein and Dan Ilouz, have also said they won’t vote for it. Others, including Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, are widely thought to oppose the bill but have not yet said how they will vote. Virtually all lawmakers from the center and left-wing parties oppose the bill.
Submitted on Oct. 28 by UTJ lawmaker Israel Eichler and 14 coauthors, the bill, titled “A Bill for Enrollment of Children to Daycares and State Sponsoring of Tuition,” proposes that eligibility for daycare subsidies be determined solely according to the mother’s income or status.
“To determine the priority for enrollment in daycare and state contributions to its fees, only the mother’s employment or study status will be considered,” states the bill, which has one co-author from Likud, Tally Gotliv. The remaining co-authors come from UTJ, Shas, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism.
Currently, eligibility for daycare subsidies is determined according to data on both parents. The bill does not name the national service issue, citing instead women’s equality as its motivation.
However, if passed, the bill would make fathers irrelevant for the purpose of determining eligibility for daycare subsidies.
That would isolate daycare subsidies from a High Court of Justice ruling in June, in which the court ordered the government to end subsidies to and for any yeshiva student who refrains from fulfilling their national service. The ruling also said that the state’s exemption for Haredi men was discriminatory and unlawful.
The Israel Defense Forces is stepping up the enlistment of Haredi men, according to reports in the Israeli media, with the aim of enlisting another 7,000 from that demographic in the coming weeks.
The exemptions from mandatory service granted to male yeshiva students was controversial even before Oct. 7, 2023, when a murderous Hamas onslaught plunged Israel into a protracted war on several fronts with hundreds of casualties.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute, about 70% of Haredi families enjoy daycare subsidies. If these are stopped for draft dodgers, the figure would be 59%, freeing up about 100 million shekels ($26 million) annually.
