The crisis that could bring down Benjamin Netanyahu, explained

At midnight Israel time on April 1, the government will hit a deadline for changing its policy on the military draft. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will then be required to send conscription notices to roughly 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men, who had been previously exempted by a law carving out special privileges for students at religious academies, or yeshivot.

This might sound like an obscure internal Israeli political fight, but it actually has the potential to alter the entire trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conscription issue splits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart at the seams. Netanyahu depends on ultra-Orthodox parties for his parliamentary majority; if he permits mass conscription of yeshiva students, they’ll abandon him. But if he gives the ultra-Orthodox what they want, he’ll run afoul of key members of his own right-wing Likud party, potentially prompting their defections.

These scenarios both end the same way: with the collapse of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and new elections, which Likud would (per every poll) lose by a wide margin. Netanyahu’s defeat would almost certainly usher his more centrist rival Benny Gantz into power. And while some of Gantz’s policies toward the war and the Palestinians would look the same, they would likely differ on some critical issues — including the all-important questions of Gaza’s political future and a Palestinian state.

Of course, potential change is just that: potential. There are many ways this scenario for real change could go awry.

Netanyahu understands he is facing a major threat, and he is working overtime to come up with a solution that could postpone or even avoid the draft crisis. Even if the draft begins, it would likely be some time before it would trigger elections, creating time for polls to shift. And even if Netanyahu falls, there’s no guarantee that Gantz — a pragmatic hawk by disposition — would implement major changes to Israel’s current policy.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that this issue is more of an existential threat to Netanyahu’s continued time in office than anything else since October 7. “Governments in Israel have fallen over this very issue,” says Dahlia Scheindlin, a political scientist and leading Israeli pollster. “I think it’s more serious than any [post-October 7 political] crisis we’ve had.”

Given that Netanyahu’s government is one of the biggest barriers blocking the path to a true solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is no small thing.

The tricky issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, explained

In Israel’s fractured multiparty system, no one party ever commands a majority of the seats in the Knesset (legislature). Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party holds a plurality, but it needed support from smaller parties to form its current majority. These smaller parties come in two flavors: the extreme nationalist right and the ultra-Orthodox.

While both types of parties are religious and socially conservative, they differ sharply in their policy priorities. Far-right nationalists’ primary concern is enshrining indefinite Israeli Jewish control over all the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. Ultra-Orthodox parties, by contrast, care primarily about preserving and expanding the special rights and privileges the Israeli state accords to the ultra-Orthodox community.

Of these rights, none is more important than the yeshiva exemption from the military draft. Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the best and most important thing a man can do is study scripture. For this reason, roughly half of all ultra-Orthodox men do no paid work, depending on government support and charity to survive. Military service in particular gets in the way of studying at a yeshiva, disrupting the traditional life of an ultra-Orthodox man.

But exempting yeshiva students from military service has long struck other Israelis as deeply unfair. Why do their children have to serve, putting their lives on the line and future plans on hold, while the ultra-Orthodox sit and study? Why is attending university or entering the workplace less important than attending yeshiva?