Did Israel's A-G open Pandora's box on IDF haredi draft? - analysis

If someone accused Attorney-General Galit Baharav-Miara of opening Pandora's Box regarding integrating haredim into the IDF, the assumption would probably be that the accusation was that she was pushing a society of people who are not ready for such integration over a cliff, as well as bringing down Israel's government.

But that is not the Pandora's Box I am writing about.

Rather, it is that the attorney-general, possibly with good intentions, may have wrecked the idea of a real court deadline with teeth which can get anyone to make hard choices on this fateful issue.

On one hand, she said that the government could not kick the can down the road anymore and that the court should immediately order a universal draft for the haredim.

On the other hand - and as or more important - she said that the government and the haredi community should receive a period of months to transition during which any financial sanctions will be frozen.

If the court accepts this second recommendation, it would likely mean that actually nothing will change even if the court orders a universal draft today or in the coming days.

The "real" deadline with "teeth" would be pushed off until the end of the school year around the end of June.

For more than two decades, Israel's three branches of government have played pass "the wonder ball" around on the issue of integrating haredim into the IDF with no one ever daring to take a hard stance to force decisions once and for all.

And yet, when the High Court of Justice set deadlines, they were taken seriously.

Baharav-Miara has defanged the court

All of the talk this week about a coalition crisis came because once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the haredim knew that they needed to update the court by Wednesday or potentially face an order for a universal draft, they actually started to try to work out a deal.

Short of a meaningful court deadline with teeth, they probably would have done nothing, as they have often done for most of two decades.

In trying to please both the court and the majority of the country who want a significantly increased haredi contribution to the IDF or national service in the post-October 7 world, as well as to "throw a bone" to Netanyahu, the haredim, and the government, the whole issue will essentially be postponed for months.

These days when Knesset MKs are convicted of minor crimes which do not carry a finding of "moral turpitude" they can come right back into office.

If the law does not explicitly bar a politician from power for a "minor" conviction, politicians now ignore it as if it is utterly irrelevant.

What will stop politicians now from doing the same to the High Court on this issue?

Why would anyone care about a deadline, even if the court orders a full universal draft, if the sanctions do not go into effect for three months?

Essentially, Baharav-Miara may have defanged the court from its power.

Sure, in three months there will be another deadline.

But by then new elections may be announced, and then the issue will be kicked off for a minimum of another six months

And then the next time the issue comes to a serious deadline with the court, will the next government take the deadline seriously or say that there is now a precedent that any deadline requires a three month transition period? 

What was mind-boggling about Baharav-miara's maneuver was that she knows that the entire government has known since the summer that a new bill had to be formulated and presented to the court by this week.

The court struck down the old policy as unconstitutional over the summer, but granted several months to make exactly the adjustments for which Baharav-Miara now asked additional months to make.

Her move could avoid causing the government to fall or push off the issue for three months.

And in the best case scenario, Netanyahu, the haredim, Benny Gantz, and maybe others will reach a compromise which accomplishes true change while also garnering haredi buy-in. After all, the IDF itself does not really want a massive influx of all of the haredim at once, or even necessarily all of the haredim at any point. Really, many in the IDF want to pick out those haredim that are especially useful for specific roles and to have others do national service. 

But in the long-run and in the worst case scenario, if the court agrees to her recommendation, which now there is more pressure on them to do, it may give up the only useful tool it had to compel our country's leaders to finally make decisions on critical issues, even when those decisions carry political risks.