Israel at cultural crossroad

JERUSALEM

The issue convulsing this country, and splintering its governing coalition, is not a nuclear-armed Iran or a moribund peace process. It is the question, as wrenching as it is unique to the Jewish state, of whether the country’s fast-growing ultra-Orthodox population should continue to be exempt from compulsory military service.

The debate came to a head this week, with the announcement by Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz that his party, after a scant 70 days, would quit the broad coalition assembled by Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Likud retains a majority without the centrist Kadima, although one now torn between religious parties resistant to weakening the exemption and ultra-nationalists demanding an immediate draft for both ultra-Orthodox and Arabs.

But the real threat is to Israel’s prospects, not Netanyahu’s. How the uproar over service is resolved will shape the nation’s economic and social future.

Unlikely allies

Strangely, this is a matter on which both Likud and Kadima essentially agree. They agree, as well, that the exemption, declared unconstitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court and set to expire Aug. 1, must be substantially pared back.

The argument is over the scope and pace of change, and the ramifications of adjusting either too fast or too slowly.

Too fast, warn Likud and its allies, and the ultra-Orthodox will stage an ugly revolt that will cleave Israeli society.

“The integration of the ultra-Orthodox into Israeli society is of enormous importance. The question is how you do it,” says Ron Dermer, a top Netanyahu aide. “If you pull on the rope too hard, the whole thing is going to snap.”

Too slowly, warn Kadima and its allies, and the revolt will come from a secular majority fed up with being freierim, suckers. They not only serve in the military but pay taxes that support religious schools and fund a social safety net that enables an astonishing 55 percent of ultra-Orthodox men to remain outside the work force.

“We’re verging on a trajectory of Israel slipping toward a third-world economy, and a third-world economy can’t sustain a first-world military,” says Yohanan Plesner, a Kadima member who chaired a committee to rewrite the exemption.

The roots of today’s controversy date to Israel’s founding in 1948. In the raw aftermath of the Holocaust, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion agreed to excuse students in yeshivot, religious schools, from military service.

Then, there were 400 such students; now there are 40,000. With an Arab population of 20 percent, and growing quickly, the burden of service —allowed but not mandatory for Arabs — will fall increasingly on the secular population.

The argument is nominally about military service; it is about much more. Assimilation of the armed forces is, from the ultra-Orthodox perspective, precisely the problem: the threat of losing youth to the lure of secular life.

From the American vantage point, this argument in Israel seems remote and esoteric. But its continued festering matters to the United States because it is so crucial to Israel’s future strength. And the failure of the short-lived national unity government to forge a solution is, consequently, bad news for both countries.

Washington Post Writers Group