Jerusalem — The gates of the Knesset remained closed late Monday evening, but the tremors reverberating through Israel’s political class could not be sealed behind stone walls. In a move that deepens Israel’s crisis of governance, the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party, long a linchpin of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing religious coalition, abruptly withdrew its support over a dispute that has haunted Israeli politics for decades: mandatory military conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The withdrawal, announced on July 14, fractures Netanyahu’s already fragile parliamentary majority and sends his coalition into uncharted waters at a time of unrelenting war in Gaza, surging domestic protests, and unprecedented legal constraints. The move follows a Supreme Court ruling last month, which mandated that the state must enforce conscription among ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, stripping away decades of special exemptions afforded to the Haredi community.
For Netanyahu, the timing could not be worse. His government, already burdened by international outrage over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and deeply unpopular judicial reforms, now finds itself teetering on collapse. As Reuters reported, the departure of UTJ leaves the ruling coalition with only 60 out of 120 seats in the Knesset, depriving it of a working majority.
This internal rupture, sparked not by external threats but by the Israeli state’s inability to reconcile its dual identity as both a militarized power and a religious enclave, could bring the entire coalition government to its knees.
Israel’s false balance collapses under ultra-Orthodox draft war
The tension between secular statehood and ultra-Orthodox autonomy has haunted Israel since its inception. The Haredi community has long enjoyed military draft exemptions in the name of preserving Torah study, a compromise brokered during the early years of the state. Yet this arrangement has become increasingly untenable in a society where most Jewish citizens, particularly secular and nationalist Israelis, are conscripted at the age of 18.
The breaking point came with a Supreme Court decision in June that declared the exemption unconstitutional and ordered the government to begin conscripting Haredi men no later than July 15. According to The New York Times, the court had postponed such action multiple times in past years, but with pressure from civil society and political rivals mounting, the justices declared that “inequality in the burden of service can no longer be justified.”
In response, UTJ leaders accused the government of capitulating to secular interests and violating the spiritual fabric of Jewish life. “This is not just a political betrayal,” UTJ’s Moshe Gafni said during a fiery Knesset address, “It is a violation of the soul of our people.”
Netanyahu trapped between settler extremism and religious blackmail
With UTJ’s exit, Netanyahu faces a shrinking range of options. Bringing centrist parties into the fold would require endorsing the court’s decision, which would in turn alienate far-right members of his own cabinet, many of whom view the ultra-Orthodox as political rivals and resent their historical immunity from conscription.
As the Associated Press observed, the timing of the crisis coincides with Netanyahu’s need to project unity during a brutal and protracted campaign in Gaza, where over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed since October, according to health authorities and corroborated by humanitarian groups.
Caught between judicial compliance and coalition survival, Netanyahu risks pleasing no one. His far-right partners in the Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties have already warned against concessions to religious moderates, while opposition figures like Yair Lapid have refused to join any unity government under Netanyahu’s leadership.
Zionist contradictions exposed as world watches Israel implode
Internationally, the crisis is being viewed as another symptom of Israel’s political fragmentation and declining legitimacy. The Al Jazeera bureau in West Jerusalem noted that this fracture exposes the foundational contradictions of the Zionist project, where religious exceptionalism and military aggression exist in constant tension.
The dispute has also deepened criticism of Israel’s two-tiered legal and military system, in which Jewish religious students can be shielded from conscription while Palestinian citizens of Israel and occupied Palestinians are subjected to state violence, curfews, and collective punishment.
“What we’re seeing is not just a coalition crisis, it’s a moral unmasking,” said Dr. Liora Hedva, a legal scholar at Hebrew University. “This moment reveals that Israel’s definition of citizenship is fundamentally fractured. Military service is compulsory for some, optional for others, and a tool of occupation for the rest.”
Gaza genocide deepens Israel’s political decay
The Gaza war has only exacerbated Israel’s domestic divisions. In the months since the conflict reignited, Israel has faced near-total diplomatic isolation across the Global South, with nations like Russia, Iran, South Africa, and Malaysia condemning its actions as war crimes. Domestically, anti-government protests have resurged, targeting both Netanyahu’s war policy and the judicial reform laws that critics argue will consolidate authoritarian control.
Against this backdrop, the conscription crisis feels less like an isolated event and more like a tipping point.
As Reuters analysts noted in a parallel dispatch, “The collapse of ultra-Orthodox support undermines Netanyahu’s status as a coalition builder and heightens the likelihood of snap elections, a prospect he had hoped to avoid at all costs.”
Indeed, the prospect of new elections amid wartime, when entire political blocs are polarized over Gaza, draft laws, and judicial authority, could usher in an even more extreme Knesset composition.
Netanyahu’s empire of war and religion nears its final reckoning
The moment now facing Netanyahu is more than political. It is existential. The Prime Minister, long considered a master tactician, has no clear path to reconstituting his coalition without betraying one faction or another. He is beholden to a judiciary that is finally reasserting its independence, to a war cabinet that is fragmented, and to an international community that views Israel’s current course with growing alarm.
Perhaps most importantly, the Netanyahu crisis is a reflection of deeper truths about Israeli governance: that a state attempting to serve settler militarism, ultra-Orthodox separatism, and international democratic norms all at once may find itself unable to satisfy any of them.
For now, Netanyahu remains in power, but only just. And with his majority gone, his war faltering, and his legitimacy bleeding from every direction, even Israel’s strongest allies in Washington have begun to question how much longer the embattled Prime Minister can hold on.