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An impending crisis over conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israel Defense Forces is threatening to undermine Israel's government and splitting the nation.

Popular sentiment on the issue has undergone a sea change in Israel in the wake of two years of war, and this is now arguably the most volatile political issue facing Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Legal Struggle

Legislators are reviewing a proposal to abolish the deferment awarded to Haredi students enrolled in Torah study, created when the State of Israel was declared in 1948.

That exemption was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court almost 20 years ago. Stopgap solutions to maintain it were officially terminated by the court last year, pressuring the government to commence conscription of the Haredi sector.

Some 24,000 call-up papers were issued last year, but just approximately 1,200 ultra-Orthodox - or Haredi - draftees reported for duty, according to army data presented to lawmakers.

Friction Boil Over Into Public View

Friction is spilling onto the city centers, with lawmakers now deliberating a new conscription law to compel ultra-Orthodox men into military service in the same way as other Israeli Jews.

A pair of ultra-Orthodox lawmakers were harassed this month by hardline activists, who are furious with the Knesset's deliberations of the draft legislation.

Recently, a elite police squad had to rescue army police who were targeted by a big group of Haredi men as they sought to apprehend a alleged conscription dodger.

These enforcement actions have sparked the creation of a new messaging system dubbed "Emergency Alert" to send out instant alerts through ultra-Orthodox communities and mobilize demonstrators to block enforcement from taking place.

"We're a Jewish country," remarked an activist. "You can't fight against the Jewish faith in a Jewish state. It is a contradiction."

An Environment Set Aside

Yet the shifts sweeping across Israel have not yet breached the walls of the Kisse Rahamim yeshiva in a Haredi stronghold, an Haredi enclave on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Within the study hall, teenage boys study together to analyze Jewish law, their brightly coloured notepads popping against the rows of white shirts and small black kippahs.

"Visit in the early hours, and you will see many of the students are pursuing religious study," the leader of the academy, Rabbi Tzemach Mazuz, noted. "Via dedicated learning, we protect the military personnel on the front lines. This is our army."

Haredi Jews maintain that unceasing devotion and Torah learning protect Israel's soldiers, and are as essential to its defense as its conventional forces. That belief was acknowledged by previous governments in the previous eras, Rabbi Mazuz said, but he conceded that Israel was changing.

Increasing Societal Anger

The Haredi community has more than doubled its percentage of the nation's citizens over the since the state's founding, and now constitutes a sizable minority. A policy that originated as an exemption for several hundred religious students became, by the onset of the Gaza war, a group of tens of thousands of men exempt from the national service.

Opinion polls indicate support for drafting the Haredim is rising. Research in July found that 85% of secular and traditional Jews - including a large segment in Netanyahu's own right-wing Likud party - favored consequences for those who declined a call-up notice, with a solid consensus in approving cutting state subsidies, travel documents, or the franchise.

"It makes me feel there are people who are part of this nation without giving anything back," one off-duty soldier in Tel Aviv explained.

"It is my belief, no matter how devout, [it] should be an reason not to go and serve your state," stated a Tel Aviv resident. "If you're born here, I find it somewhat unreasonable that you want to exempt yourself just to study Torah all day."

Perspectives from the Heart of Bnei Brak

Support for broadening conscription is also found among traditional Jews not part of the ultra-Orthodox sector, like one local resident, who lives near the seminary and notes observant but non-Haredi Jews who do serve in the military while also maintaining their faith.

"It makes me angry that ultra-Orthodox people don't serve in the army," she said. "It's unfair. I too follow the Torah, but there's a saying in Hebrew - 'The Book and the Sword' – it signifies the Torah and the weapons together. This is the correct approach, until the days of peace."

She maintains a local tribute in Bnei Brak to fallen servicemen, both observant and non-observant, who were fallen in war. Rows of faces {