Knesset debates bill to lengthen mandatory IDF service to 36 months

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee convened on Wednesday for its first discussion on a bill proposed by the Defense Ministry to lengthen mandatory service for IDF service for men by four months, generally from 32 to 36 months for combat soldiers, and from 28 to 32 months for non-combat soldiers.

The bill passed its first reading in the Knesset in July and is now being prepared for its second and third reading.

To compensate for the increase of the burden of mandatory service on citizens, from the 33rd month and on, soldiers will receive an increased income, and soldiers who are in the midst of their mandatory service and who now have to serve an extra four months will receive an extra stipend, on top of the increased income.

The amounts of the income and stipend have yet to be determined. The law is temporary as it will apply for five years.

While this bill is separate from the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription bill, which the FADC is also preparing, the two issues are connected in that both are intended to expand the IDF’s manpower so as to meet heightened security needs and reduce the burden on reservists.

A number of MKs, including committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein, said during the meeting on Wednesday that they preferred to combine the two bills into one broader one.

Others, such as United Right chairman MK Gideon Sa’ar, argued that the two should remain separate, since extending mandatory service was an urgent measure that could immediately relieve some of the pressure on reservists, while the haredi draft would take time.

Other MKs, such as Yoav Toporovsky (Yesh Atid) and Gadi Eisenkot (National Unity), argued that as an emergency measure, the bill to lengthen mandatory service should only apply only for a year, instead of five years according to the current proposal. The IDF, Defense Ministry, and FADC should during that year come up with a comprehensive plan that would include haredim and other minorities, Eisenkot added.

A number of MKs criticized at the start of the meeting what they argued was a lackluster attempt to summon the first batch of 1,000 haredi draftees. The draftees were summoned for initial checkups on Monday and Tuesday, but only 48 showed up, despite approximately 200 initially replying that they would respect the summons, head of the IDF’s personnel planning branch, Brig.-Gen. Shai Tayeb said. Tayeb pointed out that there was “immense pressure” within haredi society to avoid the draft. Dozens of extremist haredim demonstrated outside of the IDF’s induction center on Monday and Tuesday, and some even succeeded in infiltrating the base.

Relieving burden on reservists

Eran Yosef, senior deputy to the Defense Ministry’s legal adviser, explained during the meeting that as of July 1, draftees were inducted for just 30 months, in lieu of changes set in legislation years ago. This was ineffective since the IDF’s draft system works on four-month cycles, and the 30-month mark would disrupt this. Yosef argued that the law therefore needed to be changed in any case and that the IDF needed it to be carried out as soon as possible.

A large number of mandatory soldiers whose service ended since the outbreak of war on October 7 remained in their units as reservists under emergency call-ups. The bill would render this unnecessary, as it would simply extend their mandatory service instead.

However, some MKs, such as Yesh Atid chairman and leader of the opposition Yair Lapid, have pointed out that the soldiers in mandatory service would earn far less than what they would have earned as reservists during the extra four months of service, and therefore the bill’s real service was simply to save the state money by paying the soldiers less.

Yosef countered that argument during Wednesday’s meeting by arguing that the emergency call-up measure for mandatory soldiers whose service had ended was a “band-aid on an open wound,” since it prevented the IDF from moving these soldiers to new reserve units. The emergency call-ups were also temporary by nature, and thus hindered the army’s ability to begin building a new long-term manpower strategy for the IDF, Yosef explained.

FADC legal adviser Miri Frankel-Shor pointed out in the meeting that another impediment to the IDF’s ability to conduct long-term planning was the fact that the law to extend mandatory service was just one out of a package of two bills that the Defense Ministry put forward, originally in February.

The second bill would have extended the reserve cutoff age by five years and increased reserve duty from approximately 25 days every three years to 42 days a year, an increase of approximately 500%.

Unlike the mandatory service extension bill, the reservist bill was not brought to the Knesset for approval, likely due to the fact that it is deeply unpopular and significantly increases the burden of service on hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers.

However, Tayeb said during the meeting that without this second bill, the IDF would need to resort to ad-hoc emergency call-ups of reservists for extended periods.