Adv Stav Livne Lahav: “Two days after granting immunity to draft dodgers, the Knesset added two months to the service of fighters and all those serving who bear the burden of service. This choice reveals the true purpose of the law.”
The Movement for Quality Government filed a petition today with the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, against Amendment No.29 to the Security Services Law, which was approved by the Knesset plenum on 16.7.2026 and extends mandatory service from 30 to 32 months. The petition requests a conditional order directing the Knesset and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to explain why the amendment will not be repealed, along with an interim order that will freeze its entry into force until a decision is made, and a request to hold an urgent hearing.
The amendment applies to those who enlisted from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2029, including soldiers who are already serving. Some of them have been serving for nearly two years and were supposed to be discharged in a few months, according to the law that was in effect on the day of their enlistment. The petition claims that this is an active application with a retroactive dimension, which severely harms the servicemen’s reliance on and trust in the authorities. The Movement notes that the financial compensation stipulated by the law for the additional two months, at a rate of 175% or 200% of the subsistence allowance, amounting to a few thousand shekels and cannot remedy a violation of fundamental rights such as equality, freedom, and autonomy.
The petition places the amendment in the legislative context in which it was enacted. Two days earlier, the Knesset approved the Law Freezing the Arrests of Draft Dodgers, which grants Ultra-Orthodox men who do not report for service immunity from arrest, investigation, and criminal enforcement and which the High Court of Justice froze the next day in a temporary order alongside a conditional order, following a petition filed by MQG. The hearing on this petition is scheduled for July 28, 2026. The petition emphasizes that the two laws were also discussed in a join hearing in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in May, and that combining them creates a reality in which the state removes enforcement from one public and burdens the other.
According to MQG, the amendment violates several constitutional rights, primarily the right to equality. Extending the service of those who are burdened, while the draft obligation is not enforced on tens of thousands of potential draftees from the ultra-Orthodox community, deepens discrimination between draftees and perpetuates inequality and discrimination. All this in a manner that does not meet the conditions of the limitation clause in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and thus, the amendment is null and void.
According to MQG, the flaws in the amendment were raised throughout the legislative process by professional individuals. The Deputy Attorney General already in 2024 ruled in a similar context that there is a legal impediment to increasing the burden of service on those serving without taking real steps to reduce inequality, and that increasing the burden while ignoring the question of ultra-Orthodox conscription constitutes a “real constitutional defect.” The same position was presented by the Attorney General during the committee’s hearings in July 2026. The former chairman of the committee, MK Yuli Edelstein, said in the hearing that he did not know how to separate the extension of service from the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox. The Ministry of Finance, for its part, sought to establish a differential model that would extend service only in formations where there is a proven operational need, and to shorten the period of the arrangement. The Knesset nevertheless opted for a sweeping arrangement, which would be valid for three years and its implications would last until 2032.
The petition is based on data presented by the security forces themselves. Since the outbreak of the war, 964 soldiers have been killed, 6,424 have been injured, 958 of them seriously, and approximately 300,000 reservists bear the security burden. According to IDF data, approximately 12,000 soldiers are missing in each recruitment cycle, of which approximately 7,500 are combat soldiers. Army representatives made it clear to the committee that extending service does not close the gap and that there is no substitute for expanding recruitment among the ultra-Orthodox public. The government secretary, Attorney Yossi Fox, explained in the hearing that this is only one amendment intended to be passed before the elections, and that the discussion on an additional extension will take place after them.
Adv Stav Livne Lahav, Director of the Legal Department of the Movement for Quality Government: “the State of Israel tells a soldier who has returned from two years of war on several fronts, stay for two more months, and to those who have never reported, it says: don’t worry, they will not touch you. No blood is worth any different from another’s blood, and there is no obligation that applies to one group and disregards another. Equality of burden is not a slogan – it is a legal obligation that the Supreme Court already established three decades ago. The Movement will continue the legal struggle until one law applies to everyone.”