Military draft row over ultra-Orthodox exemption threatens Netanyahu's coalition ahead of Israel's election

In early October, in the city of Modi'in, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men in white shirts, black fedoras and long black frock coats confronted military police outside a building. The police had come to arrest a young Haredi man who lived there and had failed to report for military service. The crowd shouted "Nazis" at the officers. The BBC saw video of the confrontation, which is one of many in recent months.

The clashes expose one of the deepest divisions in Israeli society, and they come as Israel fights several wars, including the unresolved conflict with Hamas in Gaza, while extremist settlers step up violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The ultra-Orthodox were once a tiny minority. They are now estimated at about 14% of the population, and their birth rate is far higher than that of other Israelis. If growth continues at the current pace, they could make up one-third of the Jewish Israeli population by 2050.

The cost of supporting them has become part of the argument. Stipends that let men devote themselves to full-time religious study are estimated to cost the government 35bn shekels (£8.4bn) a year. Until recently, those men were also exempt from military service. That exemption dates to the earliest days of the state, when the Haredim were a small community of survivors rebuilding after the near extinction of the Holocaust. Their education system is separate, and many Haredim are not in the workforce.

Since the attacks of October 7, the exemption has become far more contentious. Haredi students and their rabbis fear that military service will expose young men to influences that could turn them from their community. They also hold that remaining faithful to tradition is vital to the survival of Israel and the Jewish people. Rabbi Dov Landau, one of the community's most senior leaders, said not long after October 7 that religious students should not serve and should not even visit the wounded or attend soldiers' funerals. In his view, only Torah learners protect Israel spiritually.

Wider Israel does not share that view. Polls show public support for conscripting the ultra-Orthodox rising throughout the Gaza war. The IDF has complained of a manpower deficit, and many Israelis have served hundreds of days over the past three years. Pollster Dahlia Scheindlin says right-wing communities are especially furious that the government has protected the blanket exemption while Jewish Israelis serve, and many die, in these wars.

Two years ago the Supreme Court ruled the exemption effectively null and void. Hundreds of thousands of Haredim answered with protests that blocked main highways, and they have tried to stop arrests of students accused of evading the draft, as in Modi'in. Protests have continued off and on, often in densely populated Haredi areas.

That fight now sits at the center of this month's election. The community has two traditional parties: United Torah Judaism (UTJ), representing Ashkenazi Jews, and Shas, representing Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. Both have been in Netanyahu's coalition and used their leverage to try to block enforcement of the ruling. UTJ left the government but kept backing it from outside, while Shas stayed in. Without them, the coalition would fall short of the 60-plus seats needed in the Knesset. Scheindlin says the refusal to give ground is a main reason the coalition cannot regain the 64 seats it won in 2022; it is currently polling at about 50 to 52.

His challengers all want the exemption ended and funds cut for those who refuse the draft. Gadi Eisenkot, his main rival, said a country sending its best sons and daughters to fight cannot tolerate a "state within a state." On the left, Yair Golan wants immediate mobilisation of those eligible. UTJ candidate Eliakim Stark drew rebukes across the spectrum for comparing draft evaders' plight to the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust. Former minister Yitzhak Goldknopf of UTJ said Haredim will not change their way of life and would leave the country if forced. Activist Daniel Goldman says the parties have hardened because they suspect the state wants to remake their boys as modern religious or secular. Anshel Pfeffer of the Economist says Netanyahu has long given the Haredim what they want and will not get that from the opposition.

A new party, the Haredi Public Party, offers a compromise and is fielding two women, a first for the community. Candidate Ziva Ginz says full-time Torah scholars should keep studying, while others should serve in frameworks where a man can enter as a Haredi and leave as one. Pfeffer doubts it will matter this time, since most Haredi voters follow their rabbis, and he notes Itamar Ben-Gvir is making inroads among young Haredim. The question now is whether Shas and UTJ break with Netanyahu, or find they have nowhere else to go.