Goldknopf – UTJ will not support 2025 budget without haredi IDF draft bill

The haredi United Torah Judaism party (UTJ), a member of Israel’s governing coalition, will not support the 2025 budget as long as the issue of haredi service in the IDF is not solved, a source in the party confirmed on Tuesday.

The legal blanket haredi exemption from IDF service ended in July 2023 after being ruled unequal and therefore unconstitutional, and the High Court of Justice ruled in June that barring any new legislation, all military-age haredi men were now required to serve in the IDF. The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee began work on a new bill, but the work has slowed after haredi party leaders indicated that they would not support a bill that would force yeshiva students to enlist.

A new IDF draft bill was part of the haredi parties’ demands in their coalition agreements with the Likud, which were signed in late 2022. However, the issue was repeatedly delayed for various reasons. Goldknopf, the leader of UTJ, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week that without a resolution of the issue, there was no point in placing the 2025 budget on the Knesset floor, since his party would not support it, the source said.

The threat did not apply to the expansion of the 2024 budget, which the coalition intends to finish legislating in the coming weeks.

A house divided

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich presented the framework for the 2025 budget in a press conference last week. The budget is set to include a freeze in social security benefits increases, and at least two additional politicians – Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur and Likud MK David Bitan – said they opposed such a measure.

The finance minister said that he expects the budget to pass in the government by the beginning of October, pass its first reading in the Knesset by mid-November, and pass into law by the end of December.