Israel’s Supreme Court has struck down as “unconstitutional” a government-imposed moratorium on the arrest and prosecution of Charedi men who avoid military conscription.
The moratorium was imposed by the Knesset, voting largely on party lines, in July as a compromise measure between the Netanyahu coalition and Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), the major Charedi parties, after a breakdown in negotiations to bring forward a bill exempting yeshivah students from the draft.
Such a bill has long been Shas and UTJ’s main condition for supporting the government, but has proved extremely contentious among wider Israeli society and with opposition parties.
As such, the government ran out of time to draw up a version of the bill which was likely to pass before the Knesset was dissolved ahead of October’s elections, so it instead passed a freeze on arrests for seven months, which would extend beyond the likely formation of the next coalition.
The government had argued before the court that such a freeze was necessary in order to prevent civil unrest, citing the riots and mass protests by the Charedim against conscription in recent months.
However, all nine justices found the law to be flawed on procedural grounds, while eight agreed that it was unconstitutional on the basis that it would harm the principle of equality before the law.
Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg sided with the petitioners’ argument that the initial version of the law provided for enforcement against draft dodging, but that this was removed ahead of its final Knesset readings.
This, he ruled, was a significant procedural anomaly and rendered the law effectively void.
On the constitutional question, he added: “[This law] constitutes clear discrimination in the enforcement of the law, based on sectoral-religious affiliation, which violates the state’s duty to treat all its citizens equally, in the most fundamental sense of the term.
"It is clear that this constitutes a genuine infringement of the constitutional right to equality.
“[The law] flagrantly violates one of the state’s deepest obligations toward its citizens: to exercise the coercive power entrusted to it – and to it alone – in a fair and equal manner, without determining that the blood of one group’s members is redder than that of others, or that the liberty of some is more valuable than that of others.”
The ruling could represent a blow to Netanyahu’s bid to remain in office after the October 27 election as, with polls tight between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs, he could once again be forced to rely on the support of the Charedim.
Meanwhile, the issue of Charedi conscription is set to dominate the campaign, with a majority of the political parties outwardly in favour of the removal of the group’s exemption from military service, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2024 after eight decades.
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