Beyond the draft debate, what is the real solution to Israel's security crisis? - opinion

Nearly three years after the October 7 attacks, Israel grapples with a critical manpower shortage, particularly within the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community. Despite two years of intense legal pressure, economic sanctions, mass draft orders, and Supreme Court interventions, enlistment numbers have not reached the levels policymakers anticipated.

The central question for Israeli policymakers should shift from debating who is right regarding Torah study exemptions to whether the current strategy is achieving the necessary security outcomes. The assumption that greater legal and economic pressure would automatically lead to increased enlistment has proven incorrect, suggesting a need to understand the drivers of participation rather than solely focusing on coercion.

Israel's security landscape has fundamentally changed, necessitating a new approach beyond simply increasing the number of infantry soldiers. The country requires tens of thousands of additional reservists for home front defense, base security, emergency response, and advanced technological warfare. Simultaneously, the expanding defense industry needs thousands of skilled workers. The focus must therefore be on how the Haredi community can become an integral part of this broader security ecosystem, rather than solely on drafting Haredi men into conventional military service.

For many within the Haredi community, military service is not primarily viewed as a legal obligation but as a matter of communal identity, cultural continuity, and preserving a way of life centered on Torah study. As long as the state and the Haredi community define the problem differently, even well-intentioned policies will struggle to achieve broad participation. A significant development following October 7, which has received insufficient attention, is that over 6,000 working Haredi men approached the Israel Defense Forces seeking to volunteer for reserve service.