(12 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jerusalem – 12 June 2025
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Joe Federman, Associated Press:
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has survived an attempt to topple his government in Israel’s parliament. Opposition parties had submitted legislation seeking to dissolve the parliament, but in a late night vote Netanyahu’s coalition lined up behind him and defeated the measure. The vote was triggered by an ongoing controversy over Israel’s military draft. Most Jewish men in Israel are required to join the army but under a long-standing agreement ultra-orthodox religious men are largely exempt from this requirement. This system has led to widespread anger in Israel’s secular majority, and that anger has only grown during the ongoing war in Gaza. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands of others have been forced to do weeks and even months of reserve duty. Israel’s Supreme Court has ordered Netanyahu to end this system of exemptions, but Netanyahu’s governing partners, his ultra-orthodox partners in the coalition had threatened to vote against him and join the opposition in this latest vote to topple the government if he went too far. In the end he was able to persuade them to give him more time to seek some sort of compromise. So in the short-term this shores up Netanyahu’s coalition, but in the longer term this issue, this controversy over sharing the burden over the military draft will continue to dog Netanyahu, especially as long as this war in Gaza rages on."
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government survived an attempt to dissolve Israel’s parliament early Thursday morning, with most of his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners joining him in voting against a bill that would have forced them to register for military service while the country is at war.
The vote was the most serious challenge to Netanyahu’s government since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which was the biggest security failure in Israel’s history and triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
The bill’s failure means that no other piece of legislation to dissolve parliament, called the Knesset, can be submitted for at least six months, shoring up Netanyahu’s embattled coalition.
The ultra-Orthodox parties are furious that the government has failed to pass a law exempting their community from mandatory military service.
The issue has long divided the Jewish Israeli public, especially during the 20-month war in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s opposition had hoped that the public anger over the exemptions would help topple the government.
But just two of the 18 ultra-Orthodox members of the Knesset supported the bill.
Most ultra-Orthodox legislators agreed to vote against the bill after Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein said that he and the ultra-Orthodox parties had reached an understanding on the basis of a new draft law, which they will continue discussing over the coming week.
Yitzhak Goldknopf, the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, resigned in protest as the Minister of Construction and Housing, but will remain a member of the Knesset.
Ari Kalman, spokesperson for Goldknopf, said that the minister resigned because he was frustrated with Netanyahu’s constant requests for more time to pass a draft exemption law.
The ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, or “God-fearing” in Hebrew, say that integrating into the army threatens their traditional way of life.
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