Likud MK says legislation regulating Haredi enlistment is ready for committee vote |
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Boaz Bismuth announced on Tuesday evening that his parliamentary panel finished discussing all clauses of the government’s bill regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment and that its members will soon vote on advancing it to its final two readings in the Knesset plenum.
“I am excited to announce that the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has completed reading all sections of the conscription law. We are reaching the finish line [and] will soon vote in the committee on the law [advancing to its] second and third reading,” said Bismuth, a member of the ruling Likud party.
“What dragged on for years, what got stuck over and over again in endless discussions, moved forward on my watch because there was a clear goal: a law,” Bismuth declared, adding that “now it is the role of the entire Knesset to continue the path until the law is approved by the Knesset plenum, a historic conscription law that will strengthen the IDF and Israeli society as a whole.”
Despite Bismuth’s statement, it may still take one or two weeks to draft a final version of the bill before the committee can vote on whether to send it to the full plenum, especially in light of the expected behind-the-scenes wrangling between the committee legal advisor and the Haredi parties.
Bismuth’s comments were made shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the highly controversial legislation during a press conference, insisting to reporters that its passage would lead to the conscription of 27,000 Haredim over the next three years.
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 Israel Defense Forces has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain........