JERUSALEM (VINnews) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a closed-door discussion on Sunday that the law freezing arrests of yeshiva draft evaders had failed to achieve its goal and will not be renewed in the next government. “Whoever does not study Torah will enlist – or go to prison,” he said.

According to a report by Kan News, Netanyahu explained that the law, passed as part of the government’s legislative blitz, was intended as a temporary solution to “lower the flames and increase the number of charedi recruits.” However, he said the measure failed to meet its objectives.

The prime minister added that after the elections, “a broad national government will be established that will immediately pass a full enlistment law that meets the IDF’s needs.” He said the new legislation would replace the current arrangement after the attempt to address the issue through the arrest-freeze law failed.

On July 15, the Supreme Court issued a conditional order freezing the implementation of the law suspending arrests of yeshiva students who fail to report for military service. According to the judges’ reasoning, the law contradicted previous rulings on equal burden-sharing and the positions of professional officials, who argued that such measures encourage evasion of military service. A hearing before an expanded panel is expected to take place at a later date.

A political storm erupted Sunday in the wake of Netanyahu’s remarks. At a Sunday evening meeting of the Degel HaTorah faction, the party’s MKs chose to remain deliberately silent and refrained from issuing an official response to the briefings.

Behind the scenes, however, party officials said the move was a fundamentally flawed election strategy by Likud that had only returned the issue of charedi military service to the center of public debate and ultimately harmed Netanyahu himself.

“This is something they brought upon themselves,” Behadrey Haredim quoted party officials as saying. “A response would only fan the flames.”

Unlike Degel HaTorah’s silence, United Torah Judaism chairman MK Yitzhak Goldknopf openly criticized Netanyahu, claiming that these remarks confirmed what his party had believed from the outset, that the Prime Minister’s Office never had any genuine intention of resolving the status of yeshiva students or passing meaningful draft legislation. This, he claimed, justifies UTJ’s decision to leave the government.