TUESDAY 5 MARCH 2024

MORNING NEWS NOTES

ISRAEL: Haaretz (3/5/24)

• Gantz’s “rogue visit” to the White House is part of a “mutiny” against Netanyahu.
• Gantz’s visit is not the normal way diplomacy is conducted. 
• Netanyahu’s government “long ago threw all norms to the wind.”
• This is “freelance diplomacy in the capital of Israel’s closest…aly.”
• Gantz is highlighting his own disregard for Netanyahu and also the contempt in which the Biden administration holds Netanyahu.
• Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced last week that he “would only agree to present a new military draft law if there was agreement throughout the entire emergency coalition…on how to regulate the exemption of yeshiva students from conscription.” (quote from article)
• Netanyahu promised the far-right when he took office of a law which would exempt yeshiva students.
• Gallant, however, had given Gantz the power of veto.
• Gantz is extremely unlikely to support legislation that Haredi parties want.
• Government funding of the yeshivas will stop at the end of the month.
• A year ago, Gallant spoke out against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul law.  When Netanyahu fired him, there were mass protests.
• Gallant refuses to even be in the same room with Netanyahu alone.
• Netanyahu is “the weakest prime minister in Israeli history.”  He is incapable of exercising authority over his own ministers, but is afraid of firing them.
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• Gantz, like Netanyahu, is courting the ultra-right because he has no other path to power. 
• Gallant has no place in the Likud party and will likely join Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot in a vaguely defined political movement.
• Gantz also cannot get a law passed that will force the yeshiva students to join the military, and if passed they are likely to just ignore it.
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• There are two draft laws regarding conscription making their way to the Knesset.  There is the “old draft law,” meant to find a way to legalize the exemption for ultra-Orthodox students and “those who claim to be yeshiva students” from enlisting in the IDF.
• This effort to legalize the exemption has been going on since 1998 when the Supreme Court found that the exemption was unconstitutional. 
• The government managed to extend the exemptions due to five consecutive general elections that prevented a new law getting passed.
• Last August, the extensions ran out.  The Netanuahu government has asked for another extension, and the Supreme Court must rule.
• Drafting yeshiva students would end Netanyahu’s government coalition, dependent on Haredi parties.  And, the IDF is hardly in a position to launch a new recruitment drive among yeshiva students (Note: who are so badly educated they are a problem for the military).
• Second, there is a new conscription law.  In this law, the length of service for male conscripts will be lengthened and the age of eligibility increased.
• This puts both sides in a bad position.  How can Israel demand more service for regular conscripts and still exempt yeshiva students?
• In the past, the IDF has created units with special conditions for the ultra-Orthodox (sex segregation, increased daily time for prayers and religious study), but the demand to join these units has been low.
• Neither the ultra-Orthodox nor the IDF want mandatory conscription of yeshiva students.
• “..it’s an open secret that most of the ostensibly full-time yeshiva students don’t actually engage in religious study all day.”
• The IDF also does not have the resources to give the yeshiva students “the basic skills and education they were denied in the Haredi education system.”