IDF manpower chief: Extension of service period doesn’t replace need for more troops

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

After the Knesset voted to extend the mandatory military service period for males to 32 months, the chief of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate said Friday that the move did not replace the army’s immediate need for more troops.

“The extension of service… is an operational necessity to meet all the operational challenges before us and to allow a minimal breathing room for regular and reserve personnel, to preserve professional training durations, to stabilize units and to advance further force build-up on a limited scale,” said Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa in a missive to troops.

But Kalifa said the two-month extension to the mandatory service period “does not cancel the operational need of the IDF… to expand the scope of draftees and those serving from the entire Israeli public and to regulate this in an adapted reserve service law,” in reference to the ultra-Orthodox community, which the government is trying to exempt from service.

He said the Israel Defense Forces will still need a further extension to the mandatory service to “allow a broader force build-up.”

The IDF had sought to return the mandatory service period to the original 36 months, as it was until 2015. However, lawmakers only agreed to extend it from 30 months to 32 months. Under the current legislation, the mandatory service period will again be shortened to 30 months in June 2029.

The IDF has repeatedly said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits — including 7,000 combat troops — due to the strain on its standing and reserve forces caused by the yearslong multifront war. Some 70,000 ultra-Orthodox men are currently eligible for service but have not been drafted.

The coalition just passed highly contentious legislation halting arrests of Haredi draft dodgers, which the High Court then immediately froze, pending a hearing into petitions against the law. Lawmakers this week also approved a deeply divisive Basic Law declaring Torah study a “foundational value” of the Jewish people and the State of Israel as part of the push to preserve blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.

Mandatory service for male soldiers was once 36 months, before being slashed to 32 months in 2015. It was shortened again to 30 months in 2020, before being extended back to 32 months a year later, with the planned reduction to 30 months postponed by three years.

In August 2024, amid the war, the mandatory service period was automatically shortened again to 30 months.

The first cohort enlisted under this shorter service period was supposed to be discharged in January 2027, which would have exacerbated the military’s manpower shortages. If the 30-month service period had remained in place until then, the IDF says it would have found itself short thousands more soldiers than it already is.

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