The current version of the government’s bill regulating ultra-Orthodox conscription has “many holes” and is “not good enough,” Religious Zionism MK Moshe Solomon said this week, warning that unless substantial amendments are made, his party will find itself unable to support the controversial legislation.

“Our goal is to amend every single clause to ensure that, in the end, we can recruit Haredim and they can take part in the great merit of serving in the Israel Defense Forces,” the nationalist lawmaker told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

The comments from Solomon appeared to be generally reflective of the thinking of Religious Zionism’s leader Bezalel Smotrich, who has refused to say if he supports the legislation, leaving a question mark over whether the coalition will manage to muster the needed support to pass the controversial measure, with the government’s survival likely hanging in the balance.

The bill is set to move to the plenum for a full vote in the coming weeks after Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud) announced the end of parliamentary deliberations on the measure late last month.

However, there are still fierce behind-the-scenes negotiations, with ultra-Orthodox representatives pushing back hard against changes demanded by committee legal advisor Miri Frenkel Shor.

For the past two years, the Haredi leadership has pushed for a law keeping its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

Since then, coalition lawmakers, dependent on Haredi support to keep them in government, have struggled to find a formulation that could win ultra-Orthodox backing while also meeting demands for the community to share in the burden of mandatory military service.

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........

© The Times of Israel