Much of Israel came to a standstill on Wednesday as ultra-Orthodox Jews stepped up their protest campaign against plans to draftreligious seminar students into the army.
Convoys of hundreds of cars from ultra-Orthodox communities across the country set out at the start of evening rush hour, driving slowly towards a military prison north of Tel Aviv, where a number of people are being held for avoiding the draft.
There were traffic jams on major highways, including the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which was blocked when protesters got out of their cars.
Irate motorists clashed with protesters at a number of locations.
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Some Israelis took the day off to avoid the chaos, and others left work early.
While protests by the ultra-Orthodox community against conscription are not new, the campaign has intensified in recent weeks, after the police handed over a number of “draft dodgers” to the military police. The protests included scores of ultra-Orthodox Jews storming the home of one of Israel’s most prominent judges.
Military service is mandatory in Israel and many Israelis have served hundreds of days of army reserve duty since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, causing a huge strain on families and businesses.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, with a few exceptions, do not serve in the army. Young men from the community study religious texts in academies known as yeshivot.
Calls for a more equitable sharing of the burden have been rebuffed by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and political leaders, who fear that military service will be a first step towards the adoption of a more secular lifestyle.
Protests in the past have been led by relatively small, militant groups within the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi, or God-fearing in Hebrew) community, but Wednesday’s demonstration was backed by one of the factions that sits in prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
Elections must be held by late October and the polls consistently show the Netanyahu bloc of right-wing and religious parties failing to achieve a majority.
Desperate to avoid the break-up of the government which would bring the elections forward by a few weeks, Netanyahu is trying hard to appease the ultra-Orthodox parties which are key members of his coalition.
His ruling Likud party is proposing to stop arresting those who have failed to answer draft notices and restoring daycare subsidies to the children of those convicted of avoiding army service. In return the Haredi parties will vote in favour of bills to further reduce the power of the judiciary and increase government control over the media.
Meanwhile, United Torah Judaism party leader Yitzhak Goldknopf has threatened to escalate the protests.
“The day will come when we’ll turn the country upside down, when everyone will go out to protest across the entire country. We’ll take the prisons and turn them into yeshivas,” he said.
