Equal service fading away
With every new committee, the notion that everyone should contribute through some kind of mandatory service (what's known as the equal sharing of the burden) is dealt a new blow. Every new discussion further chips away at the proposed bill. The battle lines were drawn back in 2012 when then-Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon had a spat with then-Kadima MK Yohanan Plesner over his proposed universal conscription bill. The heated debate was resumed after the 2013 elections, when Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri and MK Ayelet Shaked took up the issue in their respective committees.
Shaked reiterated what this column has already articulated: the new conscription bill is not about sharing the burden equally; it is about combating the discriminatory practices that benefited haredi yeshiva students at the expense of secular and national religious soldiers
The damage to the bill is a result of constant power struggles. The haredim and Shas want to kill the bill. This led to a deal between the haredi MKs and Habayit Hayehudi that kept the length of service of hesder yeshiva soldiers, allegedly in exchange for rewording the law so that haredi draft dodging would not be considered a criminal offense. How could the party keep touting its patriotic credentials against the backdrop of such a deal-
The Likud just stood idly by. Yesh Atid is outraged, but it has yet to offer its version of a compromise nor has it drawn a red line that says "over our dead body." The positions of Labor (apart from MK Omer Bar-Lev) and Hatnuah (apart from MK Elazar Stern) have remained murky. It seems that the parties themselves are not sure of where they stand. The public at large has also lost them.
The defense establishment has also been all over the place. Does it seek to extend the service of female soldiers in exchange for shortening that of male soldiers? Should the length of the service be cut for office grunts rather than for combat soldiers? Wouldn't that lower the motivation to serve in combat units even further? If you are going to cut the service, it should be the other way around. Does the army still believe in the slogan, "It's best to be a combat soldier, bro"-
The bill has been plagued by many things, but there was thing that has been particularly damaging, and which ironically, involved very good-intentions. Many politicians (hailing from different parties both inside and outside the government), have advocated dialog and compromise, saying it would be best to change things in a more pleasant atmosphere than through a bill that would be wielded like an ax against would-be draft-dodging haredim who will have broken the law. The general public has been in favor of that approach. The haredim and others have grown used to the draft-dodging reality of the past decades.
Those who have yet to embrace the notion that the justice must be served whatever the consequences -- fiat justitia ruat caelum -- are essentially resigned to an incremental approach. In that narrow sense, Shaked's conduct has been appropriate. That said, her party's self-serving and small-minded posture has resulted in an awkward position that undermines good-faith negotiations. How could Habayit Hayehudi ignore the benefits of having hesder yeshivah service extended from 16 to 24 months, especially when it comes to the contribution to Judea and Samaria communities? Why has the party said it would only agree to one more month of service? Why should a secular paratrooper serve 36 months when his comrade from a hesder yeshiva serve only 17? Does Habayit Hayehudi have a clear conscience despite all this? The party has not dared tell the yeshiva students that they should start serving in the military; as a result, the party felt it was imperative to let national religious soldiers enjoy a truncated service of 17 months.
Lawmakers are going to vote on the bill's various provisions over the next three weeks. But if the deliberations continue to look like a Turkish or a Persian bazaar, even those with the best intentions would throw in the towel and abort a deal that could accommodate all parties. Should that happen, Israel will have returned to square one, where the default option is just universal conscription, one that would be based on pure arithmetic. This would be an equal sharing of the burden.
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