Porush Submits Bills to Defer Yeshiva Students’ Service and Freeze Draft Arrests

MK Meir Porush tabled a series of bills on the status of yeshiva students as the 26th Knesset opened, led by two central proposals: a permanent arrangement for deferring their military service and a one-year freeze on arrests of those who do not report. MK Elyakim Stark joined all of the bills as a co-sponsor. Under the permanent arrangement, the defense minister could grant a service deferral to a yeshiva student who studies regularly for at least 45 hours a week, or 40 hours for married men studying in a kollel. Each deferral would last up to a year and could be renewed while the student meets the conditions, until age 26, when the minister would grant a full exemption from regular service. Transition clauses would bar prosecution for failing to report of any student who met the study conditions before the law takes effect, halt proceedings or sentences already under way, and let students apply for deferral even if they did not complete registration while no legal arrangement was in force. The second bill, which its sponsors call the "arrests freeze law", is a temporary provision for one year that would bar arrest, investigation and enforcement against students who meet its conditions until the comprehensive law is passed. Porush's office said that filing both bills at the opening of the new Knesset was meant to put the status of yeshiva students at the top of the parliamentary agenda. The bills follow the High Court's ruling of September 3, when a nine-justice panel unanimously struck down an amendment to the Defense Service Law, approved by the Knesset on July 14, that would have barred arrest, investigation and enforcement against yeshiva students who did not report for service. A court order had frozen the amendment a day after it passed, and it never took effect.