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A looming crisis over enlisting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military is threatening to undermine the administration and fracturing the country.

The public mood on the matter has undergone a sea change in Israel following two years of conflict, and this is now arguably the most explosive political risk facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Constitutional Conflict

Legislators are currently considering a proposal to terminate the deferment given to yeshiva scholars enrolled in Torah study, instituted when the the nation was declared in 1948.

This arrangement was declared unconstitutional by the nation's top court almost 20 years ago. Stopgap solutions to extend it were formally ended by the court last year, compelling the administration to start enlisting the community.

Approximately 24,000 draft notices were sent out last year, but only around 1,200 men from the community enlisted, according to defense officials presented to lawmakers.

Strains Boil Over Into Violence

Strains are boiling over onto the city centers, with elected officials now deliberating a new conscription law to compel yeshiva students into national service together with other Jewish citizens.

A pair of ultra-Orthodox lawmakers were harassed this month by hardline activists, who are furious with the legislative debate of the proposed law.

In a recent incident, a specialized force had to extract Military Police officers who were surrounded by a sizeable mob of community members as they attempted to detain a suspected draft-evader.

Such incidents have prompted the establishment of a new messaging system named "Emergency Alert" to rapidly disseminate information through Haredi neighborhoods and summon demonstrators to stop detentions from taking place.

"This is a Jewish state," said one protester. "It's impossible to battle religious practice in a Jewish country. It doesn't work."

A World Apart

Yet the transformations affecting Israel have not reached the confines of the Torah academy in Bnei Brak, an Haredi enclave on the edge of Tel Aviv.

Within the study hall, teenage boys sit in pairs to debate Judaism's religious laws, their vividly colored school notebooks popping against the seats of light-colored shirts and small black kippahs.

"Arrive late at night, and you will see many of the students are pursuing religious study," the dean of the seminary, a senior rabbi, said. "Through religious study, we safeguard the troops on the front lines. This is our army."

The community holds that constant study and Torah learning defend Israel's armed forces, and are as vital to its defense as its advanced weaponry. This conviction was acknowledged by previous governments in the earlier decades, the rabbi said, but he admitted that the nation is evolving.

Rising Popular Demand

The ultra-Orthodox population has more than doubled its share of the nation's citizens over the last seventy years, and now constitutes around one in seven. What began as an exemption for several hundred religious students became, by the start of the recent conflict, a group of tens of thousands of men left out of the conscription.

Opinion polls show backing for ending the exemption is increasing. A survey in July found that an overwhelming percentage of secular and traditional Jews - including almost three-quarters in Netanyahu's own right-wing Likud party - backed penalties for those who ignored a call-up notice, with a clear majority in favor of removing privileges, passports, or the right to vote.

"It makes me feel there are people who reside in this nation without giving anything back," one serviceman in Tel Aviv explained.

"I don't think, no matter how devout, [it] should be an justification not to perform service your state," added a Tel Aviv resident. "As a citizen by birth, I find it quite ridiculous that you want to exempt yourself just to engage in religious study all day."

Views from Inside a Religious City

Backing for extending the draft is also coming from religious Jews outside the Haredi community, like a Bnei Brak inhabitant, who is a neighbor of the seminary and highlights non-Haredi religious Jews who do enlist in the army while also studying Torah.

"I am frustrated that the Haredim don't perform military service," she said. "It is unjust. I am also committed to the Jewish law, but there's a saying in Jewish tradition - 'Safra and Saifa' – it represents the Torah and the defense together. That is the path, until the messianic era."

The resident maintains a modest remembrance site in the neighborhood to fallen servicemen, both religious and secular, who were lost in conflict. Long columns of images {