For many years, and perhaps for as long as anyone can remember, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community has not found itself stuck in a situation quite like this. The expiration of their historic blanket exemption from IDF service, coupled with the government’s failure to advance a new draft exemption law, has trapped the Haredi public in a tangle from which they do not know how to escape.

Everyone is racking their brains over the crisis: the great rabbis, the politicians, and the people on the street. This is especially true for the young yeshiva students who, now lacking legal cover, face the threat of arrest every day as draft evaders. This remains true even if the military police are operating in low gear on the issue and are inherently deterred by the prospect of confronting an ultra-Orthodox deserter.

This entanglement spawns new ideas and maneuvers every day — some logical, some born of hysteria and emotion, and others consisting merely of empty threats that lead nowhere.

The pot has been boiling for a long time, and on Tuesday the lid finally blew off: Rabbi Dov Lando decided it was time to dissolve the Knesset and instructed his political faction to initiate a new game.

“We have no confidence in the prime minister; we do not feel like his partners. Elections are needed as soon as possible,” the rabbi wrote on a piece of paper, making a small piece of history. The elections, currently slated by law for October 27, will apparently be moved up by a month and a half, to mid-September.

The principles of the government’s military draft exemption bill had sat before the two leading Lithuanian rabbis, Dov Lando and Moshe Hillel Hirsch, the spiritual leaders of the Degel HaTorah faction of the United Torah Judaism party, for several weeks. They knew the details well and demonstrated mastery of every clause, but they hesitated over whether to give the politicians a green light to advance the legislation.

In the exemption bill proposed by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, there is, of course, no practical possibility of actually drafting ultra-Orthodox men. Yet the rabbis are always deterred by the very engagement with clauses such as draft targets and sanctions against young men who do not enlist, even if they are something of a joke.

Beyond that, the rabbis did not understand whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was capable of passing the exemption law in the Knesset. The coalition picture is complex, the majority is extremely narrow, and ahead of the elections, Knesset members who are about to lose their seats but want to be remembered by the public for one important principled vote could also join the opponents of the law. The rabbis demanded a count, but no one could guarantee them the final outcome.

And besides, the rabbis asked, what happens if Netanyahu loses the elections? Why should we pass a law that will collapse in six months?

On Tuesday, the die was cast. Netanyahu — who, of course, conducted his own checks — reached the conclusion that he currently lacks a majority in the Knesset to pass the exemption law.........

© The Times of Israel