Chief justice blasts state over lack of progress on Tal Law

Approximately 700 yeshiva students began civilian service as an alternative to military induction this year and by 2012 the number is expected to reach approximately 2,000 per year, according to figures the state presented to the High Court of Justice yesterday.

The figures were presented in a hearing on five petitions against the July 2007 Knesset vote for a five-year extension to the law, known informally as the "Tal law," postponing military service for full-time yeshiva students.

As a direct result of the law, a system of civilian service was established so yeshiva students would be able to contribute to the state.

"This is not a revolution, it's slow evolution," the High Court president, Justice Dorit Beinisch, said yesterday when the expanded bench of nine justices heard the figures. "The state's main efforts seem to revolve around the attempt to have more yeshiva students do civilian service for one year, than to do real army service," Beinisch also said.

Among the petitioners is Dr. Yehuda Resler, who has been waging a legal battle since the 1970s against the large-scale deferment granted by the defense minister to the yeshiva students. Other petitioners are the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, attorney and activist Itay Ben-Horin, and former MKs Avraham Poraz and Ran Cohen.

According to the petitioners, the Knesset has allowed yeshiva students to continue to evade military service, thereby damaging the principle of equality and the distribution of the burden of military service.

Justice Ayala Procaccia said she wondered on what the state based its prediction of 2,000 yeshiva students a year by 2010, noting that, in opposition to a High Court ruling, the Knesset recently passed a law that allows for state support for schools but does not require a core curriculum to be taught. Without any preparation in ultra-Orthodox high schools, the program will fail, she said.

The state's representative, attorney Avi Licht, said the matter was a deeply rooted social problem that had to be solved gradually. According to Licht, neither Haredi society nor its senior rabbis are opposed to alternative civilian service, which is widely expected to increase. Licht said forcing yeshiva students to do army service would cause a social crisis and would be ineffective. "It cannot be said that the government is dragging its feet, but the Tal law cannot change demography in one day," he said.