Defense Minister Yoav Gallant approved on Thursday the sending out of approximately 1,000 draft orders to haredi men on Sunday, marking the first orders sent out since a landmark ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice in June that officially ended the long-standing haredi exemption from IDF service.
According to a statement put out by the defense ministry, the IDF intends to send out 1,000 draft orders in three waves in order to meet its goal of 3,000 haredi draftees this year, in addition to the 1,800 who were slated to join existing IDF frameworks. The IDF will conduct a “learning process” at the end of each wave in order to improve the process for the next wave, the statement read.
The second wave will occur in approximately two weeks, and the third two weeks later, Brig.-Gen. Relli Margalit from the IDF’s Operations Branch said in a meeting in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) later on Thursday afternoon.
The IDF traditionally drafts three times a year, roughly in March, July, and November. The current orders are being sent out as part of the July draft, and haredi draft plans for the next two rounds will be set “according to haredi turnout” in the current draft.
The numbers of summons could jump to 24,000 to ensure 3,000 actually join up. The 24,000 number was a maximum worst case estimate if Haredi compliance with the summons is lower than expected, whereas the IDF said that it might only need to issue closer to 6,000 summons to get 3,000 Haredim to actually enter the IDF.
The total potential Haredi draftable population is 6,000, but the IDF for 2024 hopes to bring in 3,000 more Haredim in addition to the 1,800 already serving.
According to the IDF, expectations are that those summoned would show up at one of three IDF recruitment offices: in Jerusalem, Tel Hashomer, or Tiberias – within two weeks of the summons being issued.
On the specific dates that Haredim are due to show up at these recruitment offices, the offices will be run by men only in order to comply with Haredi expectations of generally avoiding mixing between men and women while serving in the IDF.
Brig.-Gen. Shai Tayeb, head of the IDF’s personnel planning branch, explained in the FADC meeting that draftees are given two weeks to come to their initial checkups and another 45-day minimum before they begin their service. The exact date of the beginning of service depends on the type of service since draft dates differ between combat and non-combat, for example.
According to Tayeb, 50% of the draftees will be between the ages 18-20, 40% between the ages of 21-23, and 10% age 24 and over. In addition, 12%-15% are married, some 200 have children, and some 300 have truck driver licenses (and will likely serve as truck drivers in the IDF).
Which haredim will be drafted
IDF representatives explained that married Haredim are generally more likely to join because they already feel more established and less threatened by the army experience. On the other hand, the IDF wants most Haredim to be drafted into combat units and believes that single men are more likely to accept such a role.
The Defense Ministry statement mentioned the IDF’s policy of “successful recruitment,” which has been criticized by Members of Knesset, mostly from the opposition. The policy is to target haredi men that IDF believes have a high potential to actually show up and serve, and not avoid the orders or be found incapable. The IDF thus said it would begin by summoning those who are part of the workforce, and as such are already partially integrated into Israeli society, or young adults who dropped out of yeshivot and were idle or working off the books.
The opposition’s criticism has been that the IDF had no legal authority to make those distinctions, and that it was essentially playing politics by avoiding the draft of yeshiva students, which haredim across the board fiercely oppose. The IDF had to draft yeshiva students as well, some MKs argued in discussions in the FADC in recent days.
Despite hopes from the Attorney-General’s Office to grow Haredi service by around 1,000 per year, the IDF has more modest goals for growth after 2024, either hoping to maintain the additional 3,000 again in 2025, or growing to 3,700 more, but with much less of a hard number in mind.
The impression is that the IDF is much more interested in trying to present the drafting of Haredim as generally successful than it is rushing to jump beyond the 3,000 additional draftees per year.
IDF sources said that if the wider public sees 4800 Haredim per year in the army in terms of the 63,000 total draft class, then it will be seen as insufficient. However, the sources encouraged viewing the 4,800 from the perspective of a jump from 1,800 and creating a new new strategic upward trend, which would be a sea change.
In terms of special programs for Haredim, the IDF talked about adding Haredim to a Yeshiva at Hispin in the Golan, where they would also do their army service, Ramat David air force base carrying out technical and logistics duties, battle units in northern Samaria dealing with the Jenin area, as security guards for army bases countrywide, at the IDF’s Nevatim base, as paramedics, and possibly even within the IDF spokesperson’s office.
The IDF was asked about whether it would be problematic to send Haredi combat units back into the West Bank after it had to pull the Netzach Yehuda Haredi battalion out of the West Bank in December 2022 after years of an unusual number of incidents of that unit carrying out illegal violence against Palestinians.
The issue is even more serious after the US threatened to sanction the Netzach Yehuda battalion in April.
While the US postponed its decision to sanction the battalion, the question is still open and sending more Haredim into battle or law enforcement-style situations with West Bank Palestinians could reaggravate the issue.
The IDF dismissed the issue, citing Netzach Yehuda having served in Gaza without problems.
Israel’s haredi population is not homogenous and includes many different groups. They can be roughly divided into three – Lithuanian, represented by the Degel Hatorah party, Hassidic, represented by the Agudat Yisrael party, and Sephardic, represented by Shas. The first two traditionally run on a joint ticket called United Torah Judaism. The Hassidic group is itself split into dozens of Hassidic “courts,” with the central ones being Gur, Vishnitz, Tzanz, and Belze.
Each group has its own rabbinical council and internal political dynamic, and the councils and politicians have not responded identically to the haredi draft crisis. But all agree on two basic principles: first, full-time yeshiva students should be allowed to continue their studies, and second, haredim should be given the conditions to continue their lifestyle during their service.
Shas’ rabbinical council has called to not cooperate with any draft orders. However, some of its politicians have expressed more moderate views off the record, and expressed an openness to the draft of haredim who are not yeshiva students. Lithuanian politicians and rabbis have largely been adamantly opposed to any service, while Hassidic leaders have largely remained quiet.
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