The former chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the current Likud MK Yuli Edelstein said on Monday that he could not explain how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ignoring the issue of haredim (ultra-Orthodox) avoiding conscription.
Speaking at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University – not long after Netanyahu ousted him as the committee’s chairperson for pushing too hard to get haredim to serve in the military – Edelstein said that the debate surrounding integrating the haredi community into the army is “a very practical debate. It is not academic.”
“We are essentially in a constant struggle against terrorism. We know very well what we have lost,” he said in reference to the massive amount of fallen and wounded soldiers in the Israel-Hamas War to date.
“After 500 days of service, soldiers expect others to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, giving them a break,” Edelstein continued. “This is not happening.”
“If we do not know how to increase IDF recruitment – and I do not mean a one-time thing with a few thousand people, but something continuous and permanent – then all of the slogans” about how the IDF is so strong might work only in cases surrounding quick, minute air force operations, he said.
“If one does not have readily available healthy soldiers, one cannot achieve anything,” Edelstein noted.
Further, he said that his compromise proposal to bring a larger number of haredim into the IDF with some partial sanctions for those who refused to participate was a practical solution, yet “there were opposing forces who stopped this.”
Nevertheless, Edelstein said, he remains optimistic because “there is no choice, and usually when there is no choice, this leads to a solution.”
Regarding Netanyahu and other members of the coalition who did not fight alongside him toward a pragmatic integration compromise of haredim into the IDF, Edelstein said that he could not explain how some do not see the problem while others “do see the need, but are not ready to speak up.”
Separately, a former senior Defense Ministry and IDF official, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Amos Gilead told participants at the summit that Netanyahu was endangering the country by speaking at an earlier conference on Monday about economic isolation.
By mentioning this, according to Gilead, the prime minister was suggesting that this should not perturb the Israeli public, as it should become accustomed to such isolation.
Netanyahu throwing Israel into 'black hole,' Amos Gilad says
Moreover, he said that Netanyahu’s latest invasion of Gaza City was throwing Israel into a “black hole” where it would get lost and face only strategic losses on multiple fronts.
One of those fronts was the economic one, where the prime minister’s determination to prolong the war with Hamas has led to unprecedented breaks with usual European allies, including Germany and Italy, the retired IDF official continued.
Further, Gilead said that all of the current destruction that Israel is causing in Gaza serves no real purpose, only making it more likely that the Jewish state will pay the rebuilding fee itself or need to make significant concessions to Arab countries to get them to pay for it. Had the operation ended sooner, he added, these Gulf states may have been willing to be the ones to pay the bill.
In this regard, the major-general said that Netanyahu was harming normalization processes with Arab countries and that his ongoing attacks on Gaza have alarmed the Egyptians, who fear that Israel wants to push the Palestinians into their territory, which could lead to an end to the peace agreement between the two countries.
Edelstein said that there is still hope for a hostage deal "along the lines of the Witkoff outline."
"There was and remains a certain chance of reaching agreement on a phased deal outline, and not a partial deal," Edelstein said.
"In my opinion, we should go for it. If this opportunity arises in the coming days, I will do everything in my power to ensure that this issue is raised seriously and discussed seriously."