Bitter divide Exemption from war for Haredim revives old resentments

Mea Shearim is the heart of Israel's ultra-Orthodox community, whose role bitterly divides the country and, some believe, maybe the issue that ultimately brings down Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

- Lorenzo Tondo Quique Kierszenbaum

The special legal status of the ultra-Orthodox, the Haredim, that has endured as long as the state of Israel, came to an abrupt end on Monday following a Supreme Court decision that the group would no longer benefit from government subsidies and exemption from military service, as is mandatory for most other Jewish Israelis. The ruling followed a series of delays by the government in presenting a proposal demanded by the court aimed at enhancing the military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox men.

The war in Gaza has brought to a head an unresolved conflict within Israel over the special treatment of the Haredim. Some in the secular parties in Netanyahu's fractious rightwing coalition say they will walk out if the government does not carry out the instructions of the attorney general to cut off funding to the community's religious schools and begin drafting its men. Haredi representatives and supporters in the coalition say they will walk out if they are carried out.

Regardless of the outcome, the issue threatens to do something the security failure on 7 October, or the bloody morass that followed, failed to do - bring Netanyahu down. Trailing significantly in the polls, it is unlikely he could emerge triumphant from any elections that followed a coalition collapse.