Legislation to Freeze the Arrest of Haredi Draft Evaders

What does this legislation include? Why is it being legislated now, of all times? Is it constitutional? And how will it affect Haredi conscription? Everything you need to know.

Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

What does the Freeze on Arrests Bill stipulate?

The bill, whose text was published this week, stipulates, as a temporary order, that for a period of three months no arrest, investigation, or enforcement proceedings will be taken against young yeshiva students who are eligible for the draft and who have failed to report for military service. In cases where prosecution proceedings have already begun, they will be halted; and if a judgment has been handed down, the sentence will be suspended. Such a proposal is truly out of the ordinary – suspending enforcement of the law for one population group is, quite simply, not how laws work in a democracy.

In order to obtain immunity from law enforcement, Haredi yeshiva students who are eligible for the draft, together with the heads of their yeshivas or their representatives, will be required to submit affidavits within one month to a military committee that will be established within one week of the law’s enactment. The affidavits will attest that the students have indeed been studying in yeshiva for the required number of hours — 45 weekly hours for unmarried students and 40 weekly hours for married students — during the three years since July 2023, when the exemption that had existed until then under the Defense Service Law expired. With respect to younger men, their presence in yeshiva will be examined from the moment they reached age 18, when the duty of conscription applied to them. In addition, the committee is given authority to freeze enforcement proceedings even for those who were not present in yeshiva as required.

The bill ostensibly tightens supervision of students’ attendance in yeshivas by requiring an inspection once every three months instead of once a year, as had been the practice until now. This follows claims and assessments raised in committee deliberations that between one-fifth and one-third of yeshiva students are not present for the required amount of time, and that many of them work substantial hours to support themselves while studying. In reality, this is merely a symbolic gesture, since the brief 90 day period under discussion does now allow for the possibility to establish such a supervision mechanism, nor even to agree on one.

What will happen after three months?

Because we are now in the final three weeks of the Knesset’s summer session, after which elections will follow, this is in practice a longer arrangement than the three months stipulated in the proposal. Under the law, from the moment elections are declared, the existing legal situation in all fields is automatically extended for the first three months of the next Knesset, pursuant to section 38 of Basic Law: The Knesset. Therefore, in practice, the arrangement would likely continue for at least half a year.

In addition, the very fact that the arrangement addresses various issues that are oriented to longer time periods shows that this is not a matter of preserving the existing situation for a short period, but rather of changing the arrangements in preparation for what comes next. If the next government resembles the current one, it can be expected to make efforts to continue its attempts to legislate an exemption law on the basis of the new arrangement created by the temporary order.

Moreover, because there are currently around 100,000 Haredi men eligible for the draft who are violating their duty to enlist, it is clear that the proposed arrangement cannot be implemented in practical terms. There is no chance that, within the stated period, the military committee nor additional committees that can be established will be able to consider the cases of all of them. It can be expected that this will lead to attempts to extend the period, if only so that, ostensibly, the initial screening stage of the requests can be completed.

Why legislate this law now, of all times?

The Haredi public has managed to avoid conscription almost entirely throughout roughly three years of a difficult and bloody war, even though the legal exemption from conscription for yeshiva students expired in July 2023, a couple of months prior to October 7. The army and the Ministry of Defense proceeded sluggishly, and only after a long period did they begin issuing conscription orders to the entire population of Haredim eligible to be drafted, which currently stands at around 100,000 Haredi men aged 18–29.

Enforcement authorities and government ministries also did not rush to act, and only recently began doing so, following operative orders issued by the High Court of Justice in April 2026. These orders prevent the granting of benefits and discounts to those liable for conscription who are not fulfilling their obligations, and require the police to assist the Military Police with arrests and with preventing departure from the country.

This series of actions, together with the slight increase in enlistment rates — 1,860 graduates of Haredi education in the second half of 2025, an increase of around 50% compared with 2023 — is causing concern among the Haredi leadership. If the trend continues, and if state subsidies and discounts are conditioned on regularizing one’s status with the military, as has been happening in recent months, then the motivation of young Haredi men to enlist will increase. Alongside mass and violent demonstrations against the arrest of yeshiva students, what we are seeing here is an attempt to change the law in a way that will prevent these arrests and all other enforcement measures altogether.

Is this a substitute for the “Non-Conscription Law,” or a new law?

The “Non-Conscription Bill,” regarding which nearly 90 meetings of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee were held over the past two years, has not advanced. Born under the guise of a conscription law, what was in fact written was a law that entrenched the exemption for yeshiva students. It did not establish a general duty of conscription, but rather low conscription targets that could easily be reduced or evaded. It imposed only mild sanctions, and only for a short period, on those violating the duty to enlist; and even the sanctions that were included were of a kind that recruited students to yeshivas, not to the army.

Although the Likud and Religious Zionist parties generally supported and advanced the law, there were a few MKs among them who listened to the sentiments of their voters and opposed it. They were joined by Hasidic Haredi Knesset members who also opposed the few sanctions that were included in the bill, albeit for opposite reasons. Thus, the “Non-Conscription Law” was put to rest.

After the coalition failed to pass the law in full, what we're seeing now is an attempt to pass, as a temporary order, a freeze on enforcement proceedings against Haredi draft evaders. It cut out several sections of the failed law, adapted them to its needs, turned its “transitional provisions” into a “temporary order,” and thus created a thin, strange, improper, and unequal hybrid creature.

A Legislative "Cut and Paste": Can Sections of One Bill Be Lifted and Passed Separately?

Even before considering the substance of the new proposal, there appears to be a serious procedural problem with the way it is being advanced. The bill before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is based on an earlier and unusual legislative maneuver. In order to show the High Court of Justice that legislation on Haredi conscription was already moving forward, the coalition revived an older bill — one introduced by then–Defense Minister Benny Gantz during the previous “change government.” That bill had already passed its first reading in January 2022 and had been discussed in six committee meetings. In June 2024, the Knesset applied what is known as the “continuity rule” to that bill, allowing the current Knesset to pick up the legislative process from the point where the previous Knesset had left off.

The legal problem is this: the continuity rule is not a blank check. Its purpose is to allow a bill to continue moving through the legislative process, not to allow lawmakers to turn it into something fundamentally different. Under section 85 of the Knesset rules, changes made after the first reading must not introduce a “new subject” that was not part of the bill approved at that stage. If the new proposal does introduce a new subject, then it cannot simply ride on the earlier bill. It must begin its own separate legislative track from the beginning.

In this case, there appears to be a deep gap between the original 2022 bill and the proposal now being advanced. The original bill stated that its purpose was to reduce inequality in military and civilian service, while also recognizing the importance of Torah study. The current proposal, by contrast, does not aim to enlist anyone or to reduce inequality. Its purpose is to shield one group (yeshiva students evading the draft) enforcement proceedings while they remain in violation of the law.

If Basic Law: Torah Study is also passed by the Knesset, it will likely strengthen this interpretation of the bill: that its real purpose is not to promote conscription or equality, but to benefit Torah learners at the expense of the rest of the public.

How does the proposed law square with the principle of equality?

The proposal is incompatible with the principle of equality and violates it profoundly. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, if subject to judicial review by the High Court of Justice, it will be struck down as violating equality and creating severe discrimination.

Over the past several decades, whenever various conscription and exemption laws were proposed, there was always some attempt — even if limited and insufficient — to pay some form of lip service to the principle of equality. This was sometimes done by setting a goal of “reducing inequality in conscription” or by establishing low conscription targets; sometimes by setting minor economic or criminal sanctions, to be imposed on those violating the duty to enlist or on failure to meet community-level conscription targets; and sometimes by providing compensation and benefits that were too limited to those who do serve.

This is the most blatant legislative disregard to the principle of equality that we have seen in the Haredi conscription field over the years.

  The proposal to exempt yeshiva students from enforcement for their actions — even though they have no legal exemption from service and are subject to the duty of conscription just like all their peers, is unfair and gravely violates the principle of equality.

Can't one argue it is valid to suspend the arrests, given that they are only escalating tensions in the streets?

The arrests are indeed exacerbating tensions within Israeli society. However, in a democracy, the law cannot be applied differently to different groups of people, and certainly one group cannot be exempted from enforcement while all others remain subject to it.

If the legislation before us merely exempted yeshiva students from criminal enforcement, while at the same time establishing a clear objective of reducing inequality, imposing a genuine obligation to enlist, and subjecting them instead to meaningful and sustained economic and administrative sanctions, such an arrangement might be justifiable as a limited transitional measure. In that scenario, the temporary departure from formal equality would serve the legitimate purpose of ultimately achieving substantive equality.

But the bill currently before us does none of these things. It creates a form of discrimination that is incompatible with the principles of a democratic society.