Moments before a preliminary vote on a bill to dissolve the Knesset, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee convened Wednesday morning to discuss the military draft exemption bill, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to advance in an effort to persuade the ultra-Orthodox parties to drop their demand for early elections.
During the discussion, the military’s representative warned of the high number of draft evaders. “We will very soon reach the range of 80,000 to 90,000 draft evaders. This is a legal problem,” said Brig. Gen. Shay Taib, head of the IDF’s Manpower Planning and Administration Division.
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The IDF says it needs needs 12,000 more soldiers, including 7,500 combat troops
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Taib said during the debate that “we need about 12,000 soldiers, including some 7,500 combat troops. The need is first and foremost operational. In order to build a combat force within the ultra-Orthodox public, it is important to have a mechanism that arranges the age groups in a certain distribution, not a random group of people with no control over ages, because that would make things very difficult.”
“I referred to the increase in enlistment, an increase we have seen over the past three years — since the start of the war,” he added. “I am referring to the counting rules that were customary — figures of 1,700, which rose after the start of the war to 2,200 and then to 2,800. We counted the first half of 2025 and reached about 1,860, meaning the numbers are rising. In my view, the numbers are rising because there are people who want to enlist and cannot stand by, because there are more diverse tracks, and because for some people, the sanctions also have an effect. This also creates very large ripples of noncooperation.”
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Brig. Gen. Shay Taib, head of IDF’s Manpower Planning and Administration Division, speaks to Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
Regarding the number of draft evaders, he said: “Today we stand at 32,000 draft evaders, if I remember correctly, and more than 50,000 Order 12 notices, meaning people who have gone through the entire process, a large share of whom will very soon become draft evaders if they do not cooperate.”
Taib also addressed the IDF’s goal of limiting reservists to up to 60 days of service a year, noting: “Today we are at 80 to 100 days of reserve duty.”
In addition, regular military service is set to be shortened from 32 months to 30 in January 2027, unless a change is made. Addressing the implications of the shortened service, Taib said: “If we implement this in January 2027, we will see a roughly 10% drop in the size of the IDF’s combat force. This involves a very large number of combat troops, and the figures can be discussed behind closed doors. In practice, this is an even more significant decline, because it disrupts the army’s replacement cycle. We will lose between four and five regular battalions. I translate that into roughly 35 reserve battalions in operational employment.”