Haredi sources deny majority secured for army exemption bill

Preliminary vote to dissolve Knesset set for Wednesday as legislative agenda cleared

Democrats’ Yair Golan reportedly urges opposition leaders to hold joint press conference ahead of vote to show unity, as country likely to hold elections ahead of Oct. 27 deadline

A preliminary vote on Wednesday is planned to dissolve the Knesset, which would trigger early elections if ultimately passed into law, after the coalition failed to pass legislation codifying military conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Ahead of Wednesday’s vote, all bills were removed from the parliamentary plenum’s agenda for the second day in a row. The exact timeline for passing the dissolution bill remains unclear, though the legislation is expected to be swiftly pushed through the Knesset. After clearing its preliminary reading on Wednesday, the bill would need to go to a committee and then pass three more readings in the plenum.

Without any legislation to be debated, the Knesset’s agenda includes only speeches marking last week’s Jerusalem Day, Ethiopian Jewish immigration and National Students Day.

If lawmakers vote to dissolve the Knesset, elections must be held within five months of the law’s passing, which would mean mid- to late-October at the latest. The Haredi parties reportedly favor an election date in early September. Elections must, in any case, be held by October 27.

Passing the preliminary reading alone may still complicate the coalition’s legislative agenda for the remainder of the Knesset term, particularly on election-related initiatives such as lowering the voting age or raising the electoral threshold, both measures the coalition has expressed interest in advancing.

According to the Ynet news site, the Democrats chairman Yair Golan sent a letter to other Zionist opposition party heads — Together’s Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot, and Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman — suggesting they hold a joint press conference ahead of a preliminary vote to dissolve the Knesset.

“We must stand together, shoulder to shoulder in front of the public, look directly at the strong and determined democratic camp, and say in a clear and distinct voice that there is hope,” Golan was quoted as writing.

He said it marked a “critical moment in history” for the country and urged them to “prove to the public we are united for a secure, democratic, liberal, and equal Israel.”

No majority

Meanwhile, ultra-Orthodox political sources denied claims by officials close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he has managed to convince a majority of lawmakers to pass the controversial military exemption bill they have pushed for before the end of the government’s term in office.

Haredi leaders called for the dissolution of the Knesset last week after Netanyahu informed them that his coalition wouldn’t have a majority to pass the bill in the current Knesset.

On Tuesday evening, a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office asserted that following pressure by Netanyahu on holdouts within his coalition, enough have come around to allow the bill to move forward.

“We achieved the necessary majority and that is what is important,” the official stated, adding that Netanyahu’s staff had conveyed this message to Haredi leaders.

Asked about this claim, one senior United Torah Judaism figure dismissed it as “nonsense,” while a spokesman for Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni said that they had not received such a message. Degel HaTorah is a faction of UTJ.

“He doesn’t need to give notice. He should just bring the bill to a vote,” the spokesman stated.

On Monday, the military exemption bill was placed back on the parliamentary agenda, with an announcement that discussions in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee would resume on Wednesday in order to prepare it for the final two readings needed for it to pass into law.

Haredi political sources have told the press that Netanyahu’s office offered to resume discussions in the committee in an effort to postpone elections until October, while the Haredim want a September date, during the High Holidays.

The Haredi parties are widely reported to favor advancing elections to September 1, assessing that the presence of students at yeshivas at the start of the school year, as well as potential voters attending Selichot rituals, will allow them to effectively canvas for votes and maximize their support.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted, despite a persistent IDF manpower shortage. The ultra-Orthodox parties have long demanded a law enshrining their communities’ broad exemption from military service.

This effort was kicked into overdrive after the High Court in June 2024 ruled that there was no legal basis for the Haredi yeshiva students’ decades-long blanket exemption from the draft.

The coalition’s bill — which would ostensibly increase military conscription in the Haredi community, but ultimately enshrines continued exemptions for full-time yeshiva students — is widely seen as legally iffy and loophole-laden, generating intense resistance even among members of Netanyahu’s coalition, leading to the current crisis.

It was taken off the table in March following the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran. However, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Boaz Bismuth later announced he would continue to advance it, although it failed to progress due to a last-minute disagreement with Degel HaTorah’s rabbinic leadership over the bill’s contents.

Last week, national broadcaster Kan reported that at the same time the Haredim are set on dissolving the Knesset, the government is planning to advance a five-year plan to support the ultra-Orthodox community that would include transferring hundreds of millions of extra shekels in funding for programs focused on that population.