Negotiations between the United States and Iran over a new nuclear deal continue. Hamas remains armed in Gaza, Hezbollah is rebuilding in Lebanon and the IDF is still operating on multiple fronts while warning of growing manpower shortages.
Yet none of that seems to bother the Knesset.
Instead, Israel's politicians have shifted into full campaign mode. With elections expected in October, the coalition is increasingly focused not on the strategic challenges facing the country but on positioning itself for the campaign ahead. Legislation is no longer judged by whether it serves the country, but rather by what it will mean for coalition building after the votes are counted.
Nothing illustrated this better than last Wednesday, when the Knesset approved in its first reading a new Basic Law declaring Torah study a foundational value of the State of Israel. Sponsored by lawmakers from the strictly Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and backed by Shas, the bill is designed to strengthen the legal basis for exempting yeshiva students from military service. Because Israel has no formal constitution, Basic Laws enjoy quasi-constitutional status, making them far more significant than ordinary legislation.
To describe the bill as controversial would be an understatement.
After nearly three years of war, the divide between Israelis who serve and those who do not has never been more noticeable. Hundreds of thousands of reservists have spent months away from their families and jobs. Businesses have collapsed, careers have stalled, marriages have been strained and parents have missed watching their children grow up. Yet when the army calls, they report for duty because they understand there is no one else.
Even with this, the IDF says that it is stretched thin. Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir recently warned that the military was "collapsing in on itself" under the weight of mounting operational demands and an increasingly overstretched reserve force.
While Zamir didn’t say it outright, he hinted to the obvious way that burden can be alleviated: enforce the existing law requiring all 18-year-old Israelis to serve, including the tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men who currently receive exemptions.
That would be the right thing to do. It would help the country manage the different threats it faces and take a load off of the group that has been carrying the burden for the last three years. Despite knowing this, the Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is doing the exact opposite – passing laws that enshrine the draft evasion despite knowing that it weakens the country.
Even more striking is that this is not a position supported by the public. Poll after poll has shown that roughly 80 per cent of Israelis – including a majority of Likud voters – believe the strictly Orthodox should perform military service and should no longer receive blanket exemptions. In almost any other political system, advancing legislation so directly at odds with the views of one's own electorate would seem politically stupid.
So why are Netanyahu and the other senior Likud ministers raising their hands in favour of legislation that many of their own voters oppose? The answer lies not in the next election but in the one thing Netanyahu always thinks about: the coalition that comes afterward.
Since forming his government in early 2023, Netanyahu has repeatedly promised the strictly Orthodox parties new legislation protecting draft exemptions. The war forced that commitment onto the back burner. With soldiers fighting in Gaza and later in Lebanon, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis serving extended reserve duty, even Netanyahu understood that advancing such legislation while soldiers were still fighting would have been politically impossible.
But as ceasefires took hold and election season approached, the issue returned. The Charedi parties demanded that the prime minister fulfil his commitment and in order to underscore the message, they began flirting with some leaders of the opposition, hinting that they are not automatically in his pocket. Netanyahu delayed but eventually understood that if he didn’t move forward, the price could be the end of his political career.
The new Basic Law represents a compromise of sorts. It does not yet exempt anyone from military service but it sends a clear political signal to the strictly Orthodox parties that Netanyahu remains committed to protecting their interests.
Netanyahu understands that some Likud voters will be angry. But his greatest fear is not losing votes on the right. What concerns him far more is preserving the unity of his bloc after the election and preventing the strictly Orthodox parties from even entertaining another governing option.
In recent years, that possibility seemed impossible. Netanyahu had a hard lock on his bloc and the centre-left seemed bent on its refusal to sit in the same coalition with Charedi parties. But that assumption can change.
Both Gadi Eisenkot and Yair Golan have hinted that they would be willing to work with the Charedi Orthodox parties if doing so would finally end Netanyahu's nearly two-decade dominance of Israeli politics. Ideologically, such a partnership would be strange. But politics often produces unlikely alliances, particularly when all sides share a larger objective.
For significant parts of Israel's centre-left today, opposition to Netanyahu has become a stronger motivating force than opposition to the strictly Orthodox parties. Netanyahu understands this perhaps better than anyone. That is why he is willing to absorb criticism over the draft issue today if it helps lock his bloc together tomorrow. His strategy is not necessarily to win an outright majority. It is to ensure that no one else can assemble one either.
If neither bloc reaches 61 seats and the opposition sticks to its promise not to sit with Arab parties, Israel could once again find itself trapped in political deadlock. In that scenario, Netanyahu remains the head of a caretaker government and the country heads toward another election.
Viewed through that prism, legislation like the Basic Law on Torah study is not really about military service at all. It is about coalition preservation. It is about reassuring partners, preventing defections and maintaining the integrity of the right-wing bloc regardless of the immediate political cost.
That may be good politics but it illustrates something else: even after the most traumatic period in the country's history – the massacre of October 7 and the country’s longest war – the political system has returned to doing what it knows best: putting itself first.
Yaakov Katz is a co-founder of the MEAD Forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His latest book (with Amir Bohbot), While Israel Slept, is a bestseller in the United States
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