Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in favor of a controversial bill regulating Haredi exemptions from military service on Monday, defending it for the first time during a heated Knesset debate and claiming it would lead to thousands of reservists being freed from service.

Speaking during a so-called 40-signature debate, a parliamentary mechanism that allows the opposition to compel the premier to appear once a month, Netanyahu defended not only the draft bill but also his handling of the war in Gaza, Israel’s foreign relations, and his own legal wranglings as he responded to lawmakers accusing his government of causing severe diplomatic and domestic damage through his wartime policies.

Netanyahu hit back at what the opposition described as “the collapse of Israel’s international standing,” arguing that Israel remained diplomatically, militarily, and economically dominant despite its two years at war with Hamas, highlighting his ties to global leaders and defending contentious policies ranging from his pardon request to plans for a commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre.

He called the newly revised draft legislation “the beginning of a historic process to integrate Haredim into the IDF,” accusing the opposition of having pushed an “evasion bill,” an epithet used by critics to describe his government’s proposal.

“The draft evasion law is the law you brought forward, not ours,” he said, adding that his government’s proposal would achieve conscription targets “three to four times higher” than those proposed by the short-lived government led by then-prime minister Naftali Bennett and current Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

“The law regulates the status of yeshiva students. The world of Torah has protected us for thousands of years and will continue to protect us while conscripting the Haredi public,” he added.

The premier’s defense of the government’s draft law marked his first remarks on Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth’s new law to regulate conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. The opposition, as well as several coalition members, have criticized the bill that is currently being debated in the committee, saying it contains loopholes and imposes ineffective sanctions that fail to encourage enlistment.

For the past year, the Haredi leadership has been pushing for the passage of a law that would largely keep its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty informally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war in Gaza and other military........

© The Times of Israel