Is Bibi running out the clock on the chareidi draft exemption?

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Since Netanyahu’s first-term visit to the United States in 1998, his return flight has always brought undesired drama. Then, Netanyahu was returning from the Wye River Summit, where he’d met Arafat. The Palestinian leader had even called to wish him a happy birthday using the phone of his advisor, future MK Ahmed Tibi.

The video of Netanyahu taking Arafat’s call would feature in countless attack ads, along with the infamous handshake and the comment that would haunt him ever after: “I found a friend.” Returning from the crisp air of the Wye Plantation, Netanyahu began briefing against the left’s territorial concessions while still airborne, but the far right was unimpressed, toppling his government and effectively crowning Labor’s Ehud Barak prime minister.

Netanyahu’s latest visit to Washington, the third of his current (and sixth) term, ended with a big question mark, with not a single joint statement being released, let alone a hostage deal. Instead, we were treated to a mutual admiration society.

Netanyahu started his charm offensive by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump clearly savored the flattery, despite the fact that nomination by a prime minister under international arrest warrant will do more harm than good to his peace prize prospects. Then came the mezuzah shaped like a B-2 bomber, admittedly a poor substitute for the Qatari luxury jet. Amid the cloying exchange of compliments and gifts, some couldn’t help but wonder why Netanyahu had come.

Netanyahu supplied the answer in a video released on the eve of his return, in which he promised that “much will be said in the future” of the visit’s significance. To his rightist allies, he explained that the only reason he wasn’t returning to Israel with a signed hostage deal, as Trump had hoped, was his own unwavering refusal to cave to Hamas’s demands, after the revised map of Israel’s military withdrawal was rejected by Hamas. Bibi took off with the knowledge that when the Wing of Zion’s wheels touched the runway, it would be a rough landing.

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Bibi returned from Washington with two fire extinguishers in hand, one for each of the blazes raging in his government. We’ll start with the chareidim, whose attitude to the prime minister is very similar to Netanyahu’s own attitude to Trump. There’s no doubt that Netanyahu is on their side, but they have no idea whether the man will turn on them on the issue closest to their hearts — the passing of a draft law, or “the law regulating the status of Torah learners,” as Deri insisted on calling it in our interview last week.

Diving into the nitty-gritty of dates and details, it’s clear that despite having cried wolf many times in the past, the chareidi representatives have truly reached breaking point this time.

While Netanyahu was abroad, in contact with the chareidim only through his aides, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issued new directives, instructing the IDF to call up tens of thousands of yeshivah students and kollel avreichim. The AG demanded that the IDF enforce the orders by arresting deserters, not just at Ben-Gurion Airport, but on the streets of chareidi cities, and in fact everywhere cops interact with civilians.

At the same time, Yuli Edelstein, chair of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, who had reached agreements on principle with the chareidim on the eve of the Iran war, continued holding off on presenting the bill, each time on a different pretext. The latest excuse was the “serious cold” Yuli apparently contracted amid the sweltering July weather. Some MKs have taken to referring to the bill as the “chok hatzinun,” playing on the double meaning of tzinun as “cooling period” and “a cold.” The chareidim sneezed, but didn’t laugh.

Edelstein is playing for time, like a basketball player winding down the shot clock as long as he can until the final buzzer. The Knesset will leave for an extended summer recess on July 27, and won’t reconvene until the start of the winter session after the chagim.

For the chareidim, this will make for an extended bein hametzarim.

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But the chareidim are not Bibi’s only headache, with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s refusal to consider a withdrawal from the Morag Corridor, which Bibi himself has called “Philadelphi Corridor 2.0.”

Without forcing readers to pull out their maps: Controlling the Morag Corridor north of Rafah would allow the IDF to clear a key strategic area, preventing it from being used by Hamas to prepare for another attack on Israel. In addition, it will allow Israel to construct the so-called Humanitarian City decided on by the cabinet, resolving the IDF’s foot-dragging on the humanitarian issue.

Bibi knows from experience how irrational the right can be, with the fall of his first government upon his return from the Wye talks. During the latest ceasefire deal, in January 2025, Ben-Gvir resigned from the government. Smotrich followed suit by giving Bibi a deadline for resuming the war, threatening not only to follow Ben-Gvir out of the government but to actively seek its fall.

Bibi is trying to reassure rightist allies, so far with limited success. He himself longs to be free of the Gaza quagmire, preferring to focus on expanding the Abraham Accords at Trump’s side, fulfilling the hinted promise at the end of his most recent DC visit that “much will be said of it.”

And this brings us back to the chareidi angle. It was during Netanyahu’s trip that the chareidim began to suspect that Yuli Edelstein wasn’t acting on his own initiative, but on a wink and a nod from Netanyahu.

According to this theory, Netanyahu is reserving the option of closing a ceasefire deal with Trump, knowing full well that this will bring down his government, triggering snap elections. In that scenario, the last thing Netanyahu wants is to have to deal with the charge of having folded to the chareidim and advanced what the media is calling the “chok hahishtamtut [the draft-evasion law].”

As it is, the chareidim are helpless, with Netanyahu having snagged their final card — threatening to back a motion to dissolve the Knesset. The chareidi parties lost that card when Netanyahu convinced them to vote against it on the eve of the Iran war. Aside from the representatives of Gur and Vizhnitz, the chareidi delegation opposed the bill, which consequently failed to pass.

Per Knesset procedure, a bill that’s been rejected by the plenum in its preliminary reading must pass a cooling period of six months before it can be presented again, so Edelstein can continue dragging his feet with no concrete threat from the chareidim. Bibi will almost certainly weather the final two weeks before the summer break, one chareidi MK candidly admitted to me.

With the military police embarking on a campaign to arrest yeshivah students en masse, the chareidi parties don’t have six months to waste. Unless the unbelievable happens and the legislation passes in the session’s final days, the parties’ Torah councils will face the chareidi community’s hardest challenge since the founding of the state.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1070)