Law to extend IDF service to 32 months approved at last minute

Knesset votes on official dispersal of parliament, wrapping up final legislative blitz

Motion to disperse passes 62-0 with only coalition backing after it was tacked onto party financing bill; Netanyahu votes in favor of dissolution; 25th Knesset ‘most challenging’ in Israeli history, says speaker

The Knesset voted early Friday morning to disband itself ahead of the October 27 election, heading to recess after the coalition’s last-ditch blitz succeeded in passing a spate of controversial legislation into law.

The motion to dissolve parliament, tacked onto a party financing bill, was approved 62-0, including a vote in favor from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the sole support of coalition lawmakers, sending the legislative body to recess until the next parliament is sworn in following the election.

During the recess, committees may hold meetings under special arrangements, and the government or 25 MKs may demand that the Knesset plenum be convened.

Shas chairman MK Aryeh Deri threatened not to back the legislation dispersing the Knesset, demanding that opposition parties also support the law, which also hikes public funding for political parties competing in the election. He eventually backed down.

If the law were to have failed, it would have granted the Knesset another week to pass legislation, up until 90 days before the election date, according to Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik, who recommended passing the bill in its entirety.

Yisrael Beytenu chair Avigdor Liberman, a member of the opposition, characterized the legislation as a bid to again abuse taxpayer money before parliament dispersed and called it a “contemptible attempt to tie the end of the session to increasing party funding.”

The loggerheads were characteristic of the tumultuous past week, as the coalition fast-tracked several extremely divisive bills through its final readings and approved a spate of budgeting requests, some linked to funds earmarked in coalition agreements.

Addressing the plenum, Knesset Speaker MK Amir Ohana, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, called the 25th Knesset the “most challenging” in Israeli history.

“It included protests of many kinds, accompanied the longest and most difficult war in the country’s history, [as well as] the bereaved families, evacuees from the north and south, the wounded and combat trauma victims and the families of the hostages,” he said.

However, he claimed that the Knesset also saw “major moments of broad agreement and legislation that benefited many sectors of the public.”

“It is my hope that we will return here soon and remember that, despite all our disagreements, we are not enemies, but partners, even if political rivals, and that we are all part of one people and one country,” he continued.

The coalition passed a long list of laws in a marathon session wrapping up the 25th Knesset, including highly controversial legislation stripping powers from the attorney general, freezing the arrests of Haredi draft dodgers, and significantly expanding government oversight of media outlets.

The final law passed as part of the rushed effort, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s sweeping media overhaul, went through at midnight, hours before the Knesset’s dissolution.

The night prior, the Knesset voted to pass a law significantly weakening the powers of the attorney general — one of Israel’s few checks on executive power — after over eleven hours of filibustering.

Taking effect in January 2027, it would effectively strip the attorney general of authority over the government by allowing ministers to reject the attorney general’s currently binding legal positions.

On Tuesday, the coalition pushed through a law temporarily banning the arrest and prosecution of ultra-Orthodox men evading military service, legitimizing continued mass Haredi non-enlistment. In practice, the measure stands to halt most Haredi enlistment to the IDF for the next few months at least. That law was immediately frozen by the High Court of Justice, pending a hearing. Several of the other expedited laws have also been petitioned to the High Court.

Mandatory service period extended

At midnight, just before voting to dissolve parliament, the Knesset approved a bill extending the mandatory service period for male soldiers to 32 months from the current 30, despite the objection of the IDF, which repeatedly urged the government to lengthen the period to 36 months amid manpower shortages.

Forty-three lawmakers supported the bill, 12 opposed it, and one abstained.

Mandatory service for male soldiers was slashed from 36 months to 32 months in 2015. It was shortened again to 30 months in 2020, before being extended back to 32 months a year later, with the planned reduction to 30 months postponed by three years. In August 2024, amid the multi-front war sparked by the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, the mandatory service period was automatically shortened again to 30 months.

The first cohort enlisted under this shorter service period was supposed to be discharged in January 2027, which would have exacerbated the military’s manpower shortages.

Under the latest legislation, the mandatory service time will again be shortened to 30 months in June 2029.

The IDF has repeatedly said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits — including 7,000 combat troops — due to the strain on its standing and reserve forces caused by the yearslong multifront war. If the 30-month service period had remained in place until January 2027, the IDF said it would have found itself short thousands more soldiers. Some 70,000 ultra-Orthodox men are currently eligible for service but have not been drafted.

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.