The High Court’s deadline for settling the draft status of yeshivah students has expired, and they are now technically in legal limbo

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Last week’s aftermath of the Knesset passage of the reasonableness bill offered a microcosm of the political situation. As Justice Minister Yariv Levin posed for a group selfie with grinning right-wing MKs, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was hurrying out of the plenum to his office on the floor below.

Netanyahu knew very well what was coming — wall-to-wall condemnations from the international community, his White House visit delayed, large-scale refusals to report for reserve duty, a plummeting shekel and stock market, and dire forecasts from credit rating agencies.

In the moments leading up to the vote, dramatic TV footage seemed to reveal a prime minister who had lost control of the situation. Sitting on either side of him, Levin and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant bickered openly, with the latter pleading that the former “throw them a bone.” Behind him, Deri and Smotrich were frantically huddling with politicians from both sides, trying to strike a last-minute deal. Deri, who had come directly from the president’s residence, had been trying without success to broker a compromise for the previous 24 hours.

Rarely does such intra-coalition wrangling unfold in front of the cameras. That usually takes place in the prime minister’s Knesset office or in the section of the plenum closed off to journalists.

Last week we saw Netanyahu’s modus operandi — following the path of least resistance at the last possible moment — exposed on live TV for the first time. Health was also a factor, as Netanyahu had undergone an operation to implant a pacemaker the day before. Instead of convalescing for a few weeks, he had to return to the plenum to try to negotiate a compromise bill. Physically and politically vulnerable, he didn’t a chance.

Predictably, Yoav Gallant, whose position on judicial reform has been clear since round one, was a leader in the compromise effort. So was Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, who had the most to lose from the legislation’s unilateral passage. Every draft compromise offered would have limited the reasonableness standard to end judicial overview of ministerial appointments. A bill passed with broad consensus would have paved Deri’s way back to the government table. But with the bill passing only unilaterally, with no opposition support, Deri once again finds himself the collateral damage in Levin’s fight.

Perhaps surprisingly, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also took part in the compromise talks. Smotrich’s party colleague Simcha Rothman, chair of the Constitution and Justice Committee, has been Levin’s partner in pushing judicial reform. But Smotrich, who was trying to mediate in the plenum before the vote, has his own agenda. As finance minister, he understands very well the implications of a credit rating downgrade on his watch.

Proposals flew back and forth between the two sides until the 11th hour, and the ultimate failure falls on both sides equally. With Gantz and Lapid doubling down on their exorbitant demand to freeze the legislation for a year and a half, staving off a deal was an easy job for Ben Gvir and Levin. It takes two to tango — and to fight.

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The day after, Israel is at a dead end, with Netanyahu’s offer of four months of dialogue hitting a brick wall. The left is counting on the High Court to pull its chestnuts out of the fire by striking down an amendment to a Basic Law for the first time in Israel’s history. A delegation of High Court justices led by Court president Esther Hayut rushed back from an official visit to Germany to hear petitions against the law, so the last word has yet to be said.

That said, one step in the right direction came from the chareidi parties, who issued a surprisingly conciliatory statement. It started with a beginner’s mistake, with freshman UTJ MK Moshe Roth, representing the Sanz chassidus, submitting the Basic Law: Torah Study just a day after the reasonableness bill became law.

The initiative resulted from chareidi politicians’ frustration at seeing their number one priority ignored: settling the status of yeshivah bochurim vis-à-vis the military draft. Netanyahu’s commitments to legalize Torah study during the coalition negotiations proved to be as worthless as his assurances to Biden and credit rating agencies that the reasonableness bill would be passed with broad consensus.

Meanwhile, the High Court’s deadline for settling the draft status of yeshivah students has expired, and they are now technically in legal limbo. Petitions have already been filed, and judging by the High Court’s past actions, it will no doubt make the most of this opportunity.

As a result, Agudas Yisrael MKs hastily submitted a new Basic Law that would recognize the value of Torah study as a contribution to the state and exempt bochurim from the draft. But the timing of this submission was a tactical error of the highest order. The Knesset began its long summer break and won’t meet again till after the chagim, so there’s no chance of the legislation actually passing in time. And media reports about the bill amply fueled the fires of incitement.

Sephardic Shas and litvish Degel haTorah were quick to disassociate themselves from the bill, or at least its timing. Agudas Yisrael also recognized its mistake in hindsight and has shelved the bill for now.

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The hurriedly shelved proposal shone a spotlight on the price the chareidim are paying for judicial reform. Almost no legislation relating to the community’s needs— the draft law being only one example— can pass while the judicial reform is in the pipeline.

Yariv Levin, who sees the reasonableness standard as only the first step, plans a legislative blitz in the Knesset’s winter session to revamp the judicial appointments system. He sees it as a crucial step ahead of the High Court’s expected ruling that the judicial selection committee must convene in its current format, which heavily favors the Court.

But that’s where the chareidim are drawing the line. Pointed editorials in Shas mouthpiece Haderech and Agudas Yisrael’s Hamodia made it clear the chareidim didn’t enter the government to fix the justice system. Shas even appealed to “Maran’s legacy,” recalling Rav Ovadiah Yosef’s policy of consideration for different viewpoints and avoiding antagonizing the American administration.

The chareidi parties’ belated decision to pull in the reins on judicial reform is the correct one, both politically and socially. On the PR front, everyone interested in tamping down incitement against the community must creatively work for compromise. On the political-legal plane, settling the status of yeshivah bochurim won’t be possible if judicial reform crowds out everything else on the coalition’s agenda.

For seven months, the status of yeshivah bochurim has been neglected. As far as the chareidi MKs are concerned, it’s time Levin understood that enough is enough.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 972)