Ultra Orthodox Jews clash with police at anti-draft rally in Jerusalem

Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men rallied in Jerusalem on Thursday to protest against military conscription in their community, an issue that has caused a major strain in Israel’s right-wing ruling coalition.

The vast crowd were demonstrating to demand a law guaranteeing their right to avoid Israel’s mandatory military service -- long promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Crowds of men set fire to pieces of tarpaulin as hundreds of police officers cordoned off several roads across the city, AFP correspondents reported.

It came as Israel said it had identified the remains of hostages Amiram Kuper and Sahar Baruch, whose bodies were returned by Hamas earlier in the day.

A statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office said the families of the deceased men had been informed after “completion of the identification process by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine”.

Mr Baruch was taken from kibbutz Beeri to Gaza and killed during a failed army rescue operation two months later. He was 25 when he died.

Mr Kuper, 84 at the time of his abduction, was kidnapped with his wife Nourit Kuper from their home in kibbutz Nir Oz.

Militants have so far returned the remains of 17 of the 28 deceased hostages that Hamas had agreed to hand over as part of a US-brokered truce deal with Israel.

On Thursday demonstrators packed onto the tops of buildings, petrol stations, bridges and balconies above a sea of fellow protesters, some of whom held signs declaring: “Better to go to prison than to the army.”

Israeli police said one man fell from a height during rally and was subsequently pronounced dead.

A helicopter flew overhead as people gathered to take part in collective prayers.

Abraham, 27, who studies in a Jerusalem religious seminary known as a yeshiva and declined to give his full name, said the goal was to preserve a lifestyle lived according to the Torah, the Jewish holy text.

“We don’t go to the army not because we are selfish, but because we try to preserve ourselves, what the Torah tells us and the rabbis tell us,” he told AFP.

“There were hostages, and we mourned their deaths, we prayed for them three times a day, and for the soldiers,” he said, referring to the captives abducted during Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.

The mass demonstration follows a recent crackdown on ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers, with thousands of call-up notices ignored and several deserters imprisoned.

Under a ruling established at the time of Israel’s creation in 1948, when the ultra-Orthodox were a small community, men who devote themselves full-time to the study of sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass from army service.

This exemption has come under mounting pressure since the start of the war in Gaza, as the military struggles to fill its ranks.

In June 2024, the supreme court ruled that the state must draft ultra-Orthodox men, declaring their exemption had expired.

A parliamentary committee is now discussing a bill expected to end the exemptions and encourage young ultra-Orthodox men who are not studying full-time to enlist.

“The Israeli government, the supreme court and the attorney general have turned against them and want to put them in prison -- but it will not happen,” Rabbi Avraham Bismut, a resident of Beit Shemesh, told AFP.

Whether the exemption should be scrapped has been a long-running point of contention in Israeli society, with Netanyahu pledging that his government would pass a law enshrining the waiver.

But he has so far failed to deliver.

“We feel that a decree from above has been placed upon us: such severe persecution of the world of Torah and its scholars,” said protester Arik, who also gave only his first name.

Responding to the call of two ultra-Orthodox parties -- one of which forms a key part of the ruling coalition -- men travelled from all over Israel to join Thursday’s rally.

Police announced the mobilisation of 2,000 officers in Jerusalem and, later in the evening, moved to disperse the crowds.

Knesset member and opposition figure Avigdor Liberman denounced the rally, writing on X that it was a “spit in the face of our heroic soldiers!”

The issue has placed Netanyahu’s coalition -- one of the most right-wing in the country’s history -- under severe strain.

In July, ministers from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party resigned from the cabinet over the issue, though the party has not formally left the coalition.

The other ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism, has already quit both the government and the coalition.

The Sephardic Shas, which holds 11 seats in the 120-member Knesset, has warned that unless military service exemptions are anchored in law, it will withdraw its support -- a move that could topple Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, now down to 60 seats.

Some ultra-Orthodox rabbis fear that conscription will make young people less religious, but others accept that those who do not study holy texts full-time can enlist.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, or about 1.3 million people, and roughly 66,000 men of military age currently benefit from the exemption.

According to an army report presented to parliament in September, there has been a sharp increase in the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews enlisting, but the numbers still remain low, at a few hundred over the past two years.