Government Secretary, Attorney Yossi Fox, sent a letter this evening (Saturday) to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Boaz Bismuth, in which he expressed the government's support for the Security Service Bill - a temporary injunction to freeze criminal proceedings against yeshiva students who are required to be drafted.
At the same time, discussions are also expected to take place on the proposed Basic Law: Torah Study.
In the letter, Fox explains that since the expiration of the service deferral arrangement, yeshiva students have lost their legal status, and as a result, they have been deprived of yeshiva budgets and various economic and civil restrictions have been imposed on them.
According to him, the government's legal counsel even ordered the IDF to carry out frequent arrests of yeshiva students who do not enlist, even when they are not actually studying.
According to Fox, "These arrests of Torah scholars do not promote recruitment from among the ultra-Orthodox public, but rather discourage recruitment, and there is a real fear of severing ties with the ultra-Orthodox public to the point of, God forbid, reaching a civil war, less than a week before the start of the Inter-Mortal Period.".
He added that during the recent period, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee held dozens of discussions on the subject, during which broad agreements were formulated that were intended to expand the scope of recruitment of members of the Haredi public into the IDF, alongside regulating the status of yeshiva students whose Torah is their art.
Fox writes that the proposed law is intended to allow the continued advancement of the outline, without exacerbating the crisis facing the ultra-Orthodox public.
According to the letter, the temporary order is expected to apply for three months – the election period – during which arrests will be frozen, while a supervision mechanism for yeshiva students will be in place. The government emphasizes that the order does not exempt yeshiva students from the obligation to serve in the IDF and does not deny the IDF the possibility of continuing to issue summonses and enforce the obligation to report.
Discussions on the bill are expected to begin as early as this Tuesday in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in parallel with the advancement of the Basic Law: Torah Study in the Knesset Committee.
