Police Commissioner Danny Levy announced Monday a policy change in the handling of ultra-Orthodox men who evade the military draft, saying police will begin detaining deserters and transferring their cases to the Military Police.
Levy told the police general command staff that “any deserter we encounter will be detained, a report will be transferred to the Military Police, and he will be handed over to the Military Police for further handling,” ynet has learned.
Haredi protesters attack IDF soldiers over arrest of draft dodgers
(Video: Liran Tamari)
The decision comes after police had avoided arresting Haredi draft evaders and had instructed districts “not to deal with it.”
Police said the directive was issued at the beginning of the month and clarified Monday to the national command staff. Under the policy, if an officer randomly encounters a deserter, the officer will detain him, notify the Military Police and remain with him until a representative of the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division arrives. The representative is required to arrive within 30 minutes.
Police said that if the Military Police representative does not arrive within that time, the deserter will be released and given a summons to report to the Military Police.
Haredi parties condemned the decision. “At a time when violence and crime are surging and murderers are walking freely in the streets, instead of properly addressing national security, the police are deciding to divert resources to persecute our dear Torah scholars as if they were common criminals,” Shas said.
Shas also blamed the attorney general, saying she “is leading the commissioner into a political trap whose sole purpose is to topple the government.”
Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni made a similar accusation. “How far will the attorney general drag Israeli society into the depths?” Gafni said. “And it is the police commissioner who will be forced to confront Torah scholars, and this will be his glory.”
Efforts to draft Haredim were frozen during the war with Iran. Last month, IDF officials said there was no proactive enforcement against deserters because police were not accompanying arrests and were avoiding cooperation with the army.
“The army cannot operate in civilian space without coordination with the police,” the officials said. “The refusal of Israel Police to coordinate with us on this issue prevents enforcement.”
An internal police document from Israel Police's Central District, obtained by ynet a day before the outbreak of the war, showed that police had decided not to conduct proactive operations to locate IDF deserters. It also instructed officers to avoid provocations and not express opinions in the field.
The document said that if police randomly encountered a deserter, no arrest should be made. “In the event of a random detention of a deserter by police forces, the force will give the deserter a summons to report to the relevant Military Police facility and he will be released,” the document said.
In practice, the policy meant that deserters would receive a summons and be released rather than immediately transferred to authorities. That policy has now changed.