The debate over ultra-Orthodox conscription is a long-standing one in Israel. Finally implemented in 2024 after decades of exemption, military service for the Haredi community (7,000 candidates), which largely supports the radical religious and nationalist government currently in place and embodied by Benjamin Netanyahu, is now calling for its abolition. To this day, Bibi refuses to reverse the decision, and the religious movement feels scorned. The idea of overthrowing the current government as revenge has resurfaced. But in times of war, such as those Israel is experiencing, it seems completely inconceivable to reverse the decision and enact an exceptional law for this minority, which has always timidly supported Israel while also challenging its foundations. The country is short of men, and they are worn out. Some have served more than 200 days in reserve, and their families are suffering. Netanyahu is taking advantage of the vacuum and has embarked on a strategy that has no way out. He holds his coalition together thanks to radical, ultra-right ideological currents unlike any Israeli government has ever seen. They offer him political stability in an extremely unfavorable regional context. The ultra-Orthodox are among them and are trading their support, including the questioning of military service for young Haredim. For months, the current majority has been brandishing the dissolution of Parliament to bring down Netanyahu and the current government in the hope of scrapping this law.
Many in Israel believe that by dint of political gesticulation around the dissolution—”yes or no,” “under what conditions and for what reasons”—it is quite possible that the members of the coalition will get tangled up in the maneuver and end up voting half-heartedly for a reversal with an uncertain outcome. Hence the general nervousness in the Israeli Parliament, while the entire world is excited at the thought that Israel could shift to a new schedule of early elections in the coming days. The members of the Knesset are not crazy! Because that’s the whole point: we know what we’re losing, but we don’t know what we could gain. Now, these famous Haredim, like the ultra-right in general, have never obtained so much and have never embodied power as is the case today within the framework of the current government. The risk is therefore to lose everything and to see the emergence of a new Israeli leader (and who again?) who does not offer them everything they currently have: endless colonization of territories in the West Bank, zero compromise with the Palestinians, categorical refusal of a state, endless war against Hamas to overcome it. The best is always the enemy of the good. In 1998, Netanyahu had outlined the idea of a compromise during negotiations with the Palestinians at Wye River two years after coming to power, which caused him to lose his job. He is not ready to repeat the operation, and for all radical Jewish supremacist movements, he remains the best stalking horse for the conquest of power. Ready for anything, he is the one in the history of Israel who has offered the far right a direct path to power.
Yet, some currently continue to hope to bring down the indestructible Bibi, whose policies, lack of strategy or vision, and even less so the war in Gaza, which is dragging on, they no longer support, hoping that a new leader who comes from nowhere will offer everything to Israel on a silver platter: peace, the end of Hamas, peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. However, no current Israeli leader could truly allow all of this at once, that is, lead the Hebrew state and the Palestinians on the path to the resumption of dialogue, despite October 7, despite the war in Gaza and the tens of thousands of deaths on both sides for more than 20 months. For so many Israelis who now prioritize their security, the threat of dissolution is much ado about nothing. Because they don’t necessarily have a better option, and because there will never be a more right-wing and orthodox government to satisfy the most radical Israelis, who represent a significant segment of society since the October 7, 2023, pogrom perpetrated by Hamas. Only the hard right can offer the dream of perfect security.
We can fantasize about center-right Yair Lapid, or former prime minister Naftali Bennett, to take Netanyahu’s place. Nature abhors a vacuum: so many would like to see “Bibi” fall without knowing what might come afterward. That’s the problem: whether we like Netanyahu or not, he’s doing the job of warlord, redeeming himself after his blatant responsibility in weakening the security of the Jewish state on the eve of October 7.
So many Israelis hate him for his shenanigans, his support for Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority, his support for Daesh factions against the Islamist organization in Gaza, his political battles to escape justice. But who today can play the strongman who will continue months after October 7 to hold the same line of conduct, alone against all, wanting to make Israelis and the world believe that he can eradicate Hamas (an illusion), and at the very least make Israelis believe that he is the best to finally guarantee them a minimum of security by all means, by defending the idea that only the complete eradication of Israel’s enemies will finally allow them calm? You have to be full of balls, the messiah, king of “chutzpah” (insolence, nerve), to make yourself so indispensable in the face of a weakened Israeli political landscape, from which no strong, radical man has emerged for so many years. In this world that has become a jungle again, there is no longer any room for feelings and emotion. Netanyahu is like all current world leaders seeking to survive: a bulldozer for whom only violence can respond to violence, politics being worn down to the bone. Israel is clearly losing its soul, but what/who else? In any case, Netanyahu refuses to let Israelis become the new Calais bourgeois of the Middle East!
