New times, same gaps. Almost six months ago, the Jewish majority in Israel experienced the Hamas attack as a shared tragedy. With nearly 1,200 dead and more than 240 hostages, of which less than half have returned home, on October 7 he put aside the divisions that the country has been dragging on for decades and that had come to light in all their harshness. in the previous months, on the occasion of Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reform, which generated massive demonstrations.
Since then, however, the unity - which is appealed to with the phrase “Together we will win” even on the illuminated signs on the roads or those that show the free spaces left in a
parking lot
- has been breaking down, with growing protests. that sometimes intersect, such as this week due to Netanyahu's resignation, the immediate calling of elections or an agreement for the return of the hostages.
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One of these issues, perhaps the most emotional, that breaks down the 80% of the Israeli population that is Jewish, is the exemption from compulsory military service that the ultra-Orthodox have enjoyed since the country's creation in 1948. The authorities of a country built mainly by secularists granted it when they were barely 40,000 (5% of the population). 75 years later, the matter has acquired another dimension: they represent 13% of Israelis and - with almost seven children on average - they will reach 32% in 2065, according to projections by the Central Statistics Office.
His enlistment was already a banner of the Zionist center-left and part of the more secular right, which considers that all the country's Jews should “share the military and fiscal burden.” But the invasion of Gaza has put the debate back in the center, with an even more emotional component. On the one hand, because half a thousand soldiers have died between the October 7 attack and in combat with militiamen in Gaza (and tens of thousands more have left jobs and families behind) while the ultra-Orthodox stayed at home and barely a thousand he enlisted voluntarily. On the other hand, because the Gaza war, unprecedented in half a century, has once again shown that, despite many technological advances, armies sometimes need many troops on the ground. One of the main political commentators, Nahum Barnea
, summarized it this Friday in the newspaper
Yediot Aharonot
: “The generalized exemption for the ultra-Orthodox creates a manpower problem for the army, a political problem for Netanyahu and an ideological problem for Jewish society. ”.
Withdrawal of funds
The tide is low, but it has exploded this week in the blink of an eye. On Thursday, Netanyahu announced that he had failed to reach an agreement to renew the exemption. The Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, asked for a “temporary adjustment period” and, surprisingly, the Supreme Court went further, with a temporary verdict that forces the State to stop transferring funds starting this Monday to those
yeshivot
(Jewish religious seminaries) whose students should be in uniform. They are estimated at around 56,000, aged 18 to 24.
The sentence, responded the Minister of Housing and leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, Yitzchak Goldknopf, bears the “mark of Cain.” “Without the Torah, we have no right to exist. We will fight in any way for the right of any Jew to study the Torah and we will not make concessions,” he added.
The decision puts the stability of the Government of national unity at risk. After his electoral victory at the end of 2022, Netanyahu joined forces with the ultra-nationalist right and ultra-Orthodox parties. But, after October 7, he joined parties with many secular voters and those opposed to the exemption, in order to have a broad political consensus in the face of war.
Both have views that are difficult to reconcile on the subject. If Netanyahu now pushes for an agreement that significantly increases enlistment, he will likely lose the support of the ultra-Orthodox (18 of the 64 deputies of the original coalition). Otherwise, he will be left without two respected secular former chiefs of staff who come from the opposition and even his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, who rejected the draft presented by Netanyahu, despite the fact that they share a party (Likud). Among those who would lose is Benny Gantz, whom all polls show as the clear winner in any early elections. He would win 33 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, compared to 19 for the Likud.
“I think the problem can be solved,” Netanyahu said this Sunday in a press conference before undergoing surgery for a hernia that doctors detected the day before, in a routine check-up. The Supreme Court's decision does not yet pose a dead end. The Supreme Court has given the Executive 30 days of grace to present a plan and until June 30 to approve it. This Sunday, Netanyahu expressed optimism about the possibilities of reaching an agreement that is “not total, but broad” in the next 30 days. For now, the ultra-Orthodox formations remain in the coalition, waiting for events. And public funds, about 400 million shekels (about 100 million euros) annually, barely account for 7.5% of the schools' budget, which can compensate for the hole with emergency donations.
The new Palestinian government of technocrats sets out without a horizon of return to Gaza
Mohamed Mustafa is sworn in this Sunday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.Mohammed Torokman (REUTERS)
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has taken this Sunday, with the swearing in of a Government of technocrats, one more step on the path, full of uncertainties, towards its return to Gaza. The new Executive, of 23 ministers, is full of new faces. Only Ziad Hab al-Reeh repeats as head of the Interior. The new prime minister, Mohamed Mustafa, will also hold the Foreign Affairs portfolio. An economist trained in the United States and with experience at the World Bank, Mustafa is Washington's trump card to reform - or "revitalize", as he often says - the ANP, so that it can regain control of Gaza, which it lost in 2007. expelled Hamas, boycotted by the international community after its electoral victory a year earlier. The president, Mahmoud Abbas, 89, will continue to retain the bulk of power.
Mustafa said in a statement on Thursday that the Executive's first priority will be to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza that involves the complete Israeli withdrawal from the enclave. In fact, he includes eight ministers from the Strip and has created a Relief portfolio, with a view to reconstruction.
The new Government has a great challenge ahead: meeting the demands of the United States and Israel without guarantees that it will return to Gaza or that it will be useful for anything other than managing its ruins. The US plan is to make it more efficient and less corrupt and also comply with the Israeli demand to reform textbooks and eliminate payments to the families of martyrs
,
considering that they "promote terrorism." It collides with the refusal of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is opposed both to negotiating the creation of a Palestinian State (the horizon that the ANP, the Arab countries, the EU and the White House are asking for in return) and to leaving it a role in postwar Gaza. “I will not replace
Hamastan
with
Fatahstan
,” he said, in a play on words with Al Fatah, the faction led by Abbas.
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