Whether during this government or the next, the issue of conscription will accelerate the collapse of the Zionist project.

Alongside the two-year Gaza genocide, the half-dozen wars launched by “Israel” against the region, from Lebanon to Yemen to Iran, were always going to happen. The only variable was under what specific conditions they would occur.

Under the leadership of ICC-fugitive Netanyahu, the rationale behind "Israel’s" two years of pivots from one theatre to another was governed by a single objective: to keep his government in power and himself out of court and ultimately, prison. The collapse of Israeli security on October 7, 2023, all but assured the end of his political career as soon as the guns fell silent. Hence, ever since, he has been running down the clock, stalling for as long as possible and hoping that enough time passes between October 7 and the next elections to give his party hope of redemption.

The result of this Faustian bargain has been the longest state of active war in the history of the Zionist project, causing unprecedented military casualties and a recruitment gap in the IOF of 12,000 soldiers. This gap has only grown as the fundamental reality of “Israel’s” regional position has remained unchanged by its two-year rampage. Already after having declared “victory” over Hezbollah in Lebanon last year, Tel Aviv has been forced to concede that no such objective was ever achieved and is positioning itself for a second attempt to crush the resistance movement. Neither does anyone seriously believe that the 12-day war against Iran was the end of the matter. Rather, it opened a fundamentally new phase of direct clashes with Tehran, with both sides actively preparing for hostilities to resume.

This accumulating strain on “Israel’s” armed forces as well as its economy has once again thrust to the fore the issue that has been most likely to cause this government’s collapse, the question of military conscription.

Since its inception, “Israel” has enforced universal conscription of Jews with one significant exemption, the Haredim, also known as the “ultra-Orthodox” community. Despite being the most outwardly observant Jewish group, the Haredim have always been ambivalent at best towards Zionism. For those who have historically been brought into the Zionist camp, their support has been highly conditional. Throughout “Israel’s” eight decades of existence, the key condition has been that Haredi men be allowed to substitute military service with their religious studies.

Since 1948, the proportional growth of the ultra-Orthodox community, as well as the now visible military strain experienced by the IO,F has made their continued exemption one of the most politically explosive internal contradictions within the settler project. Without exception, every Zionist opposition party has taken to branding the Haredim as “draft-dodgers,” with prominent voices such as Benny Gantz and Avigdor Lieberman advocating everything from imprisoning those who avoid military enlistment to stripping them of citizenship and all associated political rights. Clear majorities have repeatedly expressed growing support for the end of such exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, it is to the Haredim that he has tied his own political fortunes over the past decade. To retain power, Likud has become dependent on forming coalitions with ultra-Orthodox parties, especially Shas and ‘United Torah Judaism.’ Significantly, ‘Shas,’ which principally represents the ultra-Orthodox among the Mizrahi and Sephardic (Arab and West Asian) Jewish populations, only formally adopted Zionism into its political platform in 2010.

For both parties, the red line for their support has been retaining the increasingly untenable exemption of their constituents, such that since June of this year, both have left the government, leaving it on the verge of collapse and entirely dependent on the support of the Religious Zionist parties of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Just last week, the Supreme Court, which has already ruled the Haredi exemption illegal, instructed the government to impose meaningful sanctions against ultra-Orthodox men who avoid enlistment, with a deadline of 45 days. For Netanyahu to worm his way out of this situation, he needs to either pass a new law enshrining the draft exemption for the Haredim (increasingly politically impossible) or obeying the court’s order and effectively terminating his alliance with the ultra-Orthodox, along with his government and any chance of returning to power.

With less than a year before elections are required, Bibi’s government has well and truly entered its terminal phase, with collapse being all but a certainty in the coming months over the issue. In the highly dubious event he were to return to government, his need to continue exempting a particular community from the burden of his policy of endless regional aggression will be no less acute and no more achievable than it is now.

In the more likely event that the Zionist opposition wins government, presumably under Naftali Bennett, the days of any special exemptions from the costs of upholding the occupation will be over. In that scenario, the religious leaders of the Haredi parties, who represent most of the current and future population growth of the Jewish population, have made clear their response. In the words of Israel’s own Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, “If yeshiva students are forced into the army, we will all board planes and leave Israel.”

It would be an irony of truly historic proportions if it came to pass that Netanyahu, by pursuing endless regional aggression to the point of exhaustion, for nothing more than his own personal preservation, were the one most responsible for rendering the Zionist project in Palestine unviable. On top of his record of genocide, it would be a fitting capstone to his life’s work.