Bennett’s public pledge to work with Eisenkot came as the coalition advanced a Basic Law defended by haredi figures and attacked by opponents as protection for draft exemptions
By Gabriel Colodro / The Media Line
Gadi Eisenkot called Basic Law: Torah Study a “draft-evasion law.” Hours later, the Knesset gave his argument a roll call. The bill passed its first reading by 63 votes to 53 and was sent back to committee to prepare for the second and third readings. No opposition lawmaker voted in favor. Four coalition lawmakers broke ranks and opposed it: Yuli Edelstein, Dan Illouz, Sharren Haskel and Moshe Solomon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition still delivered the votes for its haredi partners, but the dissent showed that the fight over Torah study, military service and draft exemptions has also opened divisions inside the government.
For Eisenkot, the vote reinforced an argument he had made earlier that day: that the coalition is still willing to prioritize its own survival at a time when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it needs more soldiers and many Israeli families continue to carry the strain of repeated reserve duty. The former IDF chief of staff and war cabinet minister framed the bill not as a narrow dispute over religious education, constitutional language or haredi budgets, but as part of a broader indictment of Netanyahu’s government. He called it a “delusional Basic Law: Torah Study” and said it would pull the ground from under soldiers and reservists.
The dissent was public and immediate. In a video posted after the vote, Edelstein said he had just left the Knesset plenum after opposing the bill in its first reading. He said no meaningful changes had been inserted and that its purpose remained, in his words, “to institutionalize draft evasion from military service.” Illouz made a sharper religious argument in a clip shared on his own social media, saying the bill was “not Torah study,” but a mechanism to preserve benefits for those who do not enlist while claiming to study. He described it as turning Torah into “a spade to dig with,” a phrase drawn from Jewish tradition to describe the improper use of Torah for personal or political gain.
The proposed Basic Law itself is brief. It declares that Torah study is “a foundational value in the heritage of the Jewish people and in the State of Israel.” Earlier language in the legislative process was more explicit, stating that those who devote themselves to long-term Torah study should be regarded, in terms of their rights and obligations, as those performing meaningful service for the state and the Jewish people. That wording was softened after pressure from parts of the coalition, but critics argue that the legislative purpose did not change. In their view, the bill is meant to create a constitutional shield around the haredi exemption model and protect benefits linked to yeshiva study at a time when courts and state authorities have increased pressure over draft enforcement.
Prof. Gideon Rahat, a senior fellow in the Political Reform Program at the Israel Democracy Institute and a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line that the bill carries a built-in contradiction. Its title sounds broadly acceptable, he said, because Torah study is an important Jewish value. Its content, however, is aimed at giving legal standing to those who study Torah as a reason not to serve in the military or as a basis for receiving state support while avoiding service.
Rahat said he was not sure the bill would ultimately become law, partly because the state would still have to decide who qualifies as someone genuinely studying Torah. Without a detailed statutory definition, he said, that question could end up before the Supreme Court. “If they continue with it, then they bring the court into their house,” Rahat said. That, in his view, is the paradox of the move: a law meant to reduce judicial interference could give the court a new opening to interpret what Torah study means in practice, including how many hours are required, under what conditions, and who has authority to certify it.
The political meaning, Rahat said, is tied to the transformation of Likud itself. Asked how a party long associated with liberal and nationalist traditions came to advance this kind of legislation, he gave a blunt answer. “There is nothing liberal in the Likud now,” he said. “It’s a party that lost its liberalism around 2019. It adopted populism, and populism is the opposite of liberalism.” He described Likud today as centered almost entirely around Netanyahu. “There is no Likud anymore,” Rahat said. “There is the party of Netanyahu.”
Rahat said dissenters may claim they are defending older Likud values, but those values no longer define the party’s center of gravity. The coalition’s ability to pass the bill showed that Netanyahu still retains discipline when it matters. The public dissent, however, gave the opposition a political opening as it tries to turn anger over military service into a broader election issue.
That search for a shared opposition argument was visible at the Herzliya Conference. Eisenkot’s appearance was not only about the haredi draft issue. It was also about his attempt to establish himself as a central figure in the post-Netanyahu opposition camp, and about whether that camp can move towards a coordinated political force. Asked why he was now presenting himself as a candidate for prime minister, Eisenkot said there was “one goal above any personal ambition,” and that goal was to win the election and replace the government.
Eisenkot also disclosed an unverified early wartime overture from coalition figures regarding a possible emergency premiership, a revelation that highlighted his effort to present himself as a credible alternative to Netanyahu.
Soon afterward came one of the conference’s clearest displays of opposition coordination. Naftali Bennett entered the hall as Eisenkot was finishing his appearance. The moderator asked Bennett what question he would pose to the former chief of staff, but Bennett declined to ask anything. Instead, he turned the moment into a public statement of respect and possible partnership. He called Eisenkot “a dear man” who had devoted his life to Israel’s security and paid the heaviest personal prices. Then he said, “I have no doubt, 100%, not 30% and not 60%, that we will work together.” Bennett added that they would do “everything” to save the State of Israel at what he described as a fateful moment for the Jewish and democratic state.
The exchange mattered because it put opposition unity on stage without resolving it. Bennett and Eisenkot did not announce a joint list, a rotation agreement, or a common party. They did not say who would lead a future bloc if several opposition figures continue to compete for the premiership. But Bennett, who presents himself as a right-wing alternative to Netanyahu, publicly placed Eisenkot inside the camp of leaders he sees as capable of forming a post-Netanyahu alternative. Eisenkot, for his part, said he and Bennett had met that morning and maintain a high-level dialogue through meetings and messages. “We have one shared goal,” he said, “to save the State of Israel.”
Rahat said the gesture makes political sense. In his view, Netanyahu is strongest in a one-on-one race, where he can focus the campaign on a single rival. A three-way competition involving Netanyahu, Bennett and Eisenkot could be more dangerous for him. “Netanyahu is very good in one-on-one,” Rahat said. “If he will have to cope with two candidates, he will really be in trouble.” He said Eisenkot can become a unifying figure, but the dynamic may be more effective if he and Bennett both remain central rather than forcing the opposition too quickly into a single-candidate frame.
The Torah Study vote gives that emerging relationship a campaign issue that is easier to explain than coalition math. The opposition remains divided on major questions, including the haredi parties, Arab parties, Gaza, and the structure of a possible next government. But military service and what Israelis call the equality of burden give its leaders a shared front. “The opposition is left, right and center,” Rahat said. “So, this would unite them, the issue of military service.”
Supporters of the bill reject that framing and argue that the crisis was produced by years of legal instability, not by a sudden haredi attempt to evade national obligations. Eli Paley, founder of the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs in Jerusalem, told The Media Line that Basic Law: Torah Study must be understood in light of two decades of failed efforts to regulate the status of full-time Torah learners.
For decades, he said, the state recognized that those sitting and learning Torah made a contribution significant enough to warrant a different arrangement for military service. The trouble, in his view, began when the Supreme Court insisted that the matter be handled through full legislation rather than annual decisions by the defense minister, and then repeatedly found the legislative arrangements insufficient.
“The Knesset was trying once again to pass the law, and the Supreme Court canceled the law,” Paley said. “Neither were we able to pass a law that will exempt the Torah learners, nor were we able to pass a law that will draft them.”
Paley described the Basic Law as less a theological statement than a legal mechanism. “It has nothing to do with why it’s important to learn Torah,” he said. “It’s just a technical tool to enable to pass a bill” that would survive judicial review.
If equality is treated as a constitutional value, he argued, then the Knesset must be able to identify another national value, Torah study, that can be weighed against it. In Paley’s view, this is not an attempt to escape the law, but an attempt to restore parliamentary authority after years in which the court, the attorney general and enforcement bodies pushed the haredi public into a corner without producing the soldiers the army needs.
His answer to the reservists’ argument was more historical than legal. Asked how secular and traditional Israelis should understand a reality in which their children serve repeatedly while many haredi men do not, Paley pointed to the status quo arrangements that accompanied the state from its earliest years. He cited the exemption of haredi women from military or national service as an example of a religious red line that Israel accepted because it understood that different communities held values that could not simply be erased by appeals to uniform civic obligation.
“If you are saying, ‘I don’t care about your Jewish value, I care about equality,’ so I lost my case,” Paley said. “But if we’re living in a society that can respect that there are different groups with different values,” then Torah study has to be understood as part of that national arrangement, he asserted.
Paley said full-time Torah learners are not simply avoiding a public duty, but making a life choice rooted in mission and sacrifice. A yeshiva student who does not go to university, he said, understands that he is likely limiting his future earning power. “He’s ready to do it because he believes that this is his mission,” Paley said. “We’re carrying a tradition of over 3,000 years, and we believe that the Jewish nation needs to make sure that the voice of Torah will continue.”
At the same time, Paley rejected the idea that every haredi man should remain in yeshiva indefinitely. “Does it mean that everybody should stay in yeshiva? Not necessarily,” he said. “Does it mean that people who are not in yeshiva shouldn’t go to the army? Definitely they should.” The question, he argued, is whether the IDF and the state are prepared to build frameworks that haredim can enter without feeling that military service requires them to abandon their way of life.
He was especially critical of sanctions, budget cuts and legal pressure aimed at haredi men who do not enlist. Such steps, he said, have increased anger and alienation but have not filled combat ranks. “After two years of huge sanctions,” Paley claimed that “not a single more soldier came to the combat units.” He argued that the state has turned tens of thousands of haredim into potential criminals while failing to develop practical models that respect the community’s values and answer real security needs.
Paley said he had worked on a broader strategic plan to integrate haredim into Israel’s security ecosystem, including home-front reserve units, emergency services, civil society organizations, and the defense industry. In one version, he said, working haredi men over the age of 26 could be brought into reserve service, with a goal of 15,000 to 20,000 participants within three to five years. In the wider model, he said, as many as 50,000 haredi men and women could be integrated into different parts of the security ecosystem without putting the same pressure on young yeshiva students.
His message to Eisenkot, Bennett and Netanyahu, he said, would be the same. Continuing arrests, sanctions and political campaigns against yeshiva students may draw applause from parts of the public, but it will not solve the manpower problem. “Let’s sit around the table and work on real solutions,” Paley said, adding that any serious plan must consider both Israel’s security needs and what he called the haredi community’s “spiritual concerns about the future of the Jewish people.”
Rahat rejected the haredi argument that the IDF is pursuing a social agenda rather than manpower. Haredi critics have argued that the military cannot demand haredi enlistment while opening more roles to women or advancing mixed-gender service. Rahat said that misunderstands the institution. “The military is trying to fill its ranks,” he said. “If it’s women, it’s good. If it’s ultra-Orthodox, it’s good.” The army, he added, is short of manpower, especially combat soldiers, and is not acting as a feminist or religious body.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid opened his remarks in Herzliya discussing the bill before turning to foreign policy. He said Basic Law: Torah Study was “not really about Torah,” but a message from haredi politicians to the Israeli mainstream. Lapid said he would not shout, because shouting would turn the issue into political noise. Instead, he asked whether haredi leaders understood “how much it hurts us.” His argument was direct: one sector of the public sends its children to serve and bear the price, while another demands money and protection from service. Lapid also appealed to haredi youth, saying they could study Torah and serve, and study and work, and still be part of the Israeli story.
Avigdor Liberman approached the same crisis through coalition arithmetic. He has long ruled out sitting with haredi parties and said again at Herzliya that the next government must be a broad Zionist and statesmanlike government. But he also suggested that the Torah Study debate was exposing cracks where the opposition had previously found none. Parts of Likud, he argued, understand the damage caused by the government’s dependence on the haredi parties. Liberman said opposition parties are already coordinating for election day. “We are preparing for all scenarios,” he said, adding that “everyone is working together” on election day.
Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, pushed the argument toward formal consolidation. He said the opposition should not wait for the campaign to become a competition among parties that agree on the need to replace the government but fail to generate enough momentum to do it. In his view, the timing requires Bennett and Eisenkot to connect and create what he called a winning political body. Golan said this may be “the most critical hour since 1948” and argued that only a clear political victory would allow the “forces of repair” to change direction after October 7.
The coalition, however, can point to a fact the opposition cannot ignore: despite dissent, the bill passed its first reading. Netanyahu’s government may be battered, unpopular with large parts of the public, and divided on military service, but it still delivered 63 votes for a core haredi demand. That gives the haredi parties a concrete achievement and shows that coalition discipline has not collapsed. It also gives the opposition a cleaner argument: that a government still resisting a state commission of inquiry into the failures around October 7 is now advancing legislation that critics say protects one sector from the burden borne by others.
For the coalition, the risk is that the bill becomes a symbol larger than its wording. Its sponsors say it is about restoring Torah study to its proper standing in the Jewish state. Critics say it is about turning draft avoidance into a constitutional principle. Between those descriptions sits a large group of Israelis who may not oppose Torah study but are angry at a system in which some families are called up for reserve duty again and again, while others are protected by law and coalition agreements.
For the haredi public, the danger is different. If the opposition turns the bill into a central campaign symbol, the community may face a sharper backlash in the next Knesset, especially if a new government is formed without haredi parties. Paley’s warning speaks to that risk. He argues that the state cannot recruit haredim through humiliation, or solve a manpower crisis by criminalizing an entire way of life. His alternative is negotiated integration rather than coercion. The opposition’s challenge, in turn, is to show that its demand for equality of burden can produce a workable model.
Eisenkot is betting that the bill’s opponents will win the argument over what it represents. The Bennett exchange gave him an image of opposition coordination; the Knesset vote gave him a sharper issue. The question now is whether that convergence becomes a governing alternative or remains only another moment in a campaign that has yet to decide who leads it.
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