Trying to bypass court, law banning Haredi draft-dodger arrests was doomed from the start

The bench has ruled repeatedly against laws mandating unequal sharing of the military service burden and castigated the government for failing to enforce ultra-Orthodox conscription. And it’s been swift to freeze the latest law

It is often said that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but the High Court of Justice bucked that notion on Wednesday when it quickly froze the implementation of a law passed less than 24 hours earlier that had sought to ban authorities from arresting members of the ultra-Orthodox community who refuse to comply with military draft orders.

The court said that previous rulings on the issue, as well as “weighty arguments” against the law, justified temporarily freezing implementation until it can hold an initial hearing on the matter.

The unusually rapid intervention, coupled with the already critical and skeptical language of the court regarding the legislation, appears to indicate even at this early stage that the law will not survive judicial review.

An initial hearing on the law will now be held in short order, likely followed by an interim order freezing implementation of the law until there is a final decision, which in all likelihood will strike down the law for good.

Despite the raucous tussle in the Knesset on Tuesday as coalition MKs passed the law in its final readings, the legislation was always destined to be a long shot.

Flagrantly discriminatory, the law confers immunity from arrest for draft-dodging on a single segment of the population. And it appears to directly contravene numerous High Court rulings on the matter requiring greater equality in the sharing of the military burden.

On top of that, it was passed despite bitter opposition from the IDF, which is in dire need of more soldiers amid the country’s ongoing wars.

But it is precisely because of the blatant way the law violates the principle of equality, and how it seeks to circumvent very recent High Court rulings demanding that criminal sanctions be enforced against Haredi draft dodgers, that the High Court is likely to strike down this measure in a final ruling.

The terms of the law are relatively simple. No arrests, enforcement action or investigations can be conducted by police and the IDF against ultra-Orthodox draft-dodgers, currently numbering some 72,000 souls, if they are studying in a yeshiva. The law expires on November 30, although it will in practice extend until February.

As the court indicated in its order on Wednesday, the legislation seems to fly in the face of several previous High Court rulings that laws violating the principle of equality regarding military service are unlawful.

The court struck down the Tal Law arrangement for Haredi enlistment in 2012, and struck down another law in 2017 that provided no means by which to effectively increase ultra-Orthodox enlistment.

“The law severely harms the right to equality, as well as justice and fairness, which are synonymous with the principle of equality. The law discriminates between one person and another, between one blood and another, and between one life and another,” Justice Isaac Amit, now the court’s president, wrote at the time.

Just a few months ago, Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg penned a searing indictment of the government for failing to enforce conscription requirements on Haredi draft dodgers. For decades, Israel had let ultra-Orthodox men shrug off mandatory military service, but that was supposed to end with a High Court ruling in June 2024 ordering the enlistment of ultra-Orthodox men of military age, following the June 2023 expiration of a law allowing for mass military service exemptions.

“The current state of affairs, of mass, deliberate and ongoing violation of the law, with such a severe violation of equality, is unacceptable, especially given the pressing, necessary security need to recruit additional conscript soldiers,” wrote Sohlberg, one of the court’s most ardent conservatives, in November 2025.

In the same ruling, Sohlberg also castigated what he described as moral failures of the ultra-Orthodox community to participate in military service during the multiple conflicts following the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and atrocities.

The emphasis of the court in previous rulings on equality before the law, especially in regard to military service, meant the law passed Tuesday never stood a chance.

It seems hard to imagine that the court would agree, even on a temporary basis, to a law where young Haredi men enrolled in yeshivas would be immune from sanctions for draft dodging, while other Israeli citizens would still be subject to prosecution if they tried to skip out on serving.

The fact that the government has ignored High Court orders in November and April instructing it to draw up policies for enforcing the draft on Haredi men will give the court the impression that the new law is simply designed to circumvent its previous rulings.

The High Court has taken a dim view of such practices, as recently as this June.

Inevitably, cabinet ministers and coalition MKs immediately said that the court’s ruling freezing implementation of the arrest ban law should not be respected, and called on the police not to abide by the ruling.

In theory, this would set up another possible constitutional crisis if police ignored the court and refused to arrest draft dodgers based on cabinet or ministerial orders.

Even as it stands, the police have arrested only 97 ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers in 2026, out of an estimated 72,000 potential Haredi conscripts.

Of those, only 16 were arrested as a result of proactive policing, while the remaining 81 were arrested following incidental encounters with the police.

The High Court singled out the police for criticism over their failure to carry out such arrests in a hearing in April, stating that “there is no rule of law” as a result of such failures.

Nevertheless, police chief Danny Levy said just last week that the police would obey the High Court without question.

“We obey the law and will comply with every High Court ruling without batting an eyelash, regardless of anyone’s political opinion,” Levy said, after the head police spokesman refused to confirm that the police would abide by court rulings.

At the very least, it would seem that the police will continue to arrest draft-dodgers who inadvertently get caught in the police’s net, even if proactive arrests remain at a minimum.

The court’s stay is the latest match to be thrown into what is becoming a combustible pre-election mix of politicking, protests, policing, and judicial vilification. How that plays out on the ground over the coming months is anyone’s guess.

But the swift temporary injunction makes clear that the High Court, at least, will not allow the government to finagle its way out of legal obligations by riding roughshod over previous rulings.