Chareidi MKs entered the coalition with one job — regulate the legal status of Torah learners — and they failed, big-time

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Tens of thousands of draft orders are queued up in the IDF’s computerized system. Thousands have already been issued, and thousands will go out this week, but tens of thousands more are set for rollout over the next few months.

It’s now official and irreversible — every single Torah learner in Israel will receive a draft order in the mail over the coming months, making them criminals in the Jewish state.

Beyond the petty politics and the halfhearted resignations by the chareidi parties from the government, the immediate result of the Knesset’s summer session ending next Sunday without a law regulating the status of yeshivah students is that all bnei yeshivah will become criminals under Israeli law, without exception.

It would be hard to exaggerate Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Yuli Edelstein’s manipulation of his chareidi colleagues, but it should be remembered that the mistakes started at home. Chareidi MKs entered the coalition with one job — regulate the legal status of Torah learners — and they failed, big time.

The wiliest of political operators swallowed Edelstein’s promises hook, line, and sinker, but in the final stretch, amid a war that continues to take a bloody toll, the result was predetermined.

The chareidi parties’ contribution to the crisis came primarily early in this government’s term. Paving the way to the Torah world’s lowest point since the founding of the state, the chareidi community’s representatives in the Knesset never put their foot down as the coalition pushed off deadline after deadline for resolving the issue.

But what happened, happened. In a country where there still hasn’t been a commission of inquiry into the worst massacre since the Holocaust, it would be too much to expect chareidi representatives to take responsibility. Meanwhile, Yuli Edelstein has gone mask off, openly reneging on the agreements reached with the chareidim on the eve of the Iran strike, and withdrawing the bill from the committee’s agenda.

Edelstein played his part to perfection. After wearing the chareidim down for months, he’s made it to the summer recess having pulled the rug from under their feet, and he’s once again the hero of the protest movement, the only coalition figure who had the gumption to block the “chok hahishtamtut [draft evasion law].”

On the eve of the summer recess, the future seems bleak. If chareidi representatives couldn’t deal with a few thousand draft orders, how will they fare when tens of thousands of yeshivah students become deserters in the eyes of the law?

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Now Edelstein is no longer the key figure, and the talk of his ouster is far from convincing. Characteristically, Netanyahu entered the event too late, after the horses had left the barn. This week, he focused on his health (after a bout of food poisoning), the hostage deal, the talks with the Trump administration, and only lastly, the chareidi threats. “Dardaleh [lame],” to borrow a term from Ben-Gvir.

Anyone who’s spending time in the Knesset, specifically the Shas and UTJ faction rooms, doesn’t need a reminder that we’re in bein hametzarim. A deep sense of gloom hangs over the place. Especially over MKs who were negotiating with Yuli Edelstein, and were promised until the last minute that he would honor his commitments.

UTJ’s resignation from the government and coalition, and Shas’s half-resignation, from the government but not the coalition, were hardly earth shattering. It’s not even the prime minister’s biggest coalition headache.

Netanyahu has made the chareidim a few offers, including ousting Edelstein or transferring authority over the legislation to a different committee, or even to the foreign affairs and defense subcommittee. But a legal opinion over the last few days renders this solution moot. With the Knesset’s legal advisor having helped Edelstein draft his version of the bill, it’s safe to say that whatever alternative bill is presented after his ouster would be struck down by an interim order amid petitions to the High Court, without even a proper debate.

The proposal to transfer authority over the issue to a different committee is no more realistic. Per Knesset procedure, this can only be done with the approval of the committee chair, and as long as Yuli remains in his office, he’ll never agree to diminish his own authority.

After the decision by the chareidi parties (Shas, Degel HaTorah, and parts of Agudas Yisrael) to vote down the bill to dissolve the Knesset on the eve of the Iran strike, Netanyahu has a three-month-long recess before the chareidi parties become a serious threat.

While procedure requires a cooling period of six months from the moment a bill is voted down in its preliminary reading before it can be presented again, the prevailing view is that if the chareidi parties themselves present the bill and request to bypass the cooling period due to “changed circumstances,” Knesset speaker Amir Ohana won’t be able to stop them. If he does refuse, the High Court would likely force his hand.

The reason the chareidi parties avoided this course of action until now starts with Shas, which fears it could lose three seats’ worth of non-chareidi right-wing votes for toppling Netanyahu. And Degel HaTorah still follows Rav Shach’s philosophy of sticking with the cultural right.

Despite the disappointment, shock, and grief, the question of the alternative is still decisive. The “Bennett 2026” party, which has made drafting chareidim its flagship issue, is as natural an ally to the chareidim as Ben-Gvir is to the Arab parties.

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Netanyahu now has three months to play on an empty court and make up his mind whether he wants to go to elections or buttress his coalition.

Throughout the recess, there’s no real threat to his government, given that neither bills to dissolve the Knesset nor no-confidence motions can be voted on during a recess.

If he decides to accept a hostage deal at the start of the break, he’ll still have 30 days before the start of the winter session, at the end of the 60-day-long first phase of the deal.

This window will give Netanyahu the time to work out whether he’ll resume the war at the end of the first phase or extend the deal and end the war.

A broad peace deal involving an end of the war in Gaza as well as an expansion of the Abraham Accords will very likely trigger Ben-Gvir’s resignation, and possibly Smotrich’s too. In this scenario, the last thing Netanyahu wants is to be responsible for a relatively lenient draft law in what’s sure to be a bruising election campaign.

On the other hand, if the fighting resumes, we’ll see Netanyahu once again wading into the fray and trying to advance a draft law at the start of the winter session — at the 11th hour, and not a moment earlier.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1071)