The fallout between the parties following the deal to form the government has looked inevitable and was always a recipe for conflict with secular Israel
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox government partners who are looking for commitments to be met With half his country already on the streets fighting his attempts to strip the supreme court of power, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu now faces a potential standoff from within his hard-right coalition that could bring it down.
Two small ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, on whom the coalition depends for its survival, have threatened to block further judicial reform unless the prime minister introduces legislation to underpin the exemption of the Haredi community from compulsory military and national service in favour of religious study.
To secular Israelis, the deeply unpopular exemption is likely to prove yet more inflammatory than even the judicial overhaul legislation, not least in the ranks of the army reserves depleted by protesters against the latter. As things stand, only a small minority of eligible ultra-Orthodox males – some 9 per cent, according to the Israeli Defence Forces – perform military service, compared to a national average among Jewish Israelis of over 80 per cent. Recent research has predicted that by 2050, 40 per cent of 18-year-old Jewish Israelis will come from the ultra-Orthodox community.
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