Israel and Palestine

A decision in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to criminalise ultra-Orthodox Jews refusing to abide by Israel's military draft has brought relations between the country's 800,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews and the 5m others to their worst level since Israel was established in 1948. Anti-Zionist graffiti litters the Haredim's bastions in Jerusalem. Haredi protesters have replaced the silent middle Hebrew letter in Israel's name with another one, rendering it as Yesh-raal-"There's Poison". And earlier this month hundreds of thousands poured onto Jerusalem's main highway for a mass communal prayer-cum-protest, closing it to traffic for hours. "Let us study the Torah," they cried, mockingly asking how any Jewish state could prevent students from studying it. One ultra-Orthodox sect vowed that it would flee Israel if the authorities attempted to enforce the law. "We owe our survival to the Torah, not to squadrons of fighter-jets," said a protester.

For Yair Lapid, a standard-bearer of Israel's secular Jews, the Haredi conscription law is a crowning achievement. As finance minister and leader of Israel's second-largest party, he pushed through the bill by 67 votes to one on March 12th, with most of the opposition boycotting the session. His supporters, concentrated in the coastal metropolis around Tel Aviv, portrayed the ultra-Orthodox as welfare scroungers living off secular taxpayers who pay income tax and risk their lives in patriotic combat. "Share the netel," meaning the burden, is their battle-cry.

Fearful that Mr Lapid might take his 18 fellow parliamentarians out of the ruling coalition, thus toppling it, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, rallied to his call. So too did Jewish Home, which as a party of religious Zionism values military service as well as Torah study.

Yet the generals want the ultra-Orthodox in their ranks no more than the ultra-Orthodox want to join up. Army recruitment centres are already struggling with a surfeit of brawn at a time when Israel's fighting machine is becoming increasingly automated, with drones rather than infantrymen to the fore. So some argue that if the government was really serious about integrating the ultra-Orthodox and rescuing them from poverty they would have done better to push them out of the proliferating Torah colleges and into jobs instead of uniforms.

For the first time in the history of the State of Israel, 103 Israeli missions abroad will be completely closed for an indefinite period of time, as will the Foreign Ministry's headquarters in Jerusalem.

The strike was called in protest of the employment conditions of Israeli diplomats and the Finance Ministry's decision to cut their salaries over the renewed sanctions.

The Foreign Ministry's workers' union informed all employees in Israel and abroad by email and text messages that the general strike would begin at 3 P.M. on Sunday and instructed them to leave their workplaces immediately.

The Jerusalem headquarters will be locked over the course of the strike and entry will be denied to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin and Director-General Nissim Ben-Sheetrit.

The diplomats also refused to handle British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit last week (though he came anyway), and are now refusing to cooperate on preparations for the pope’s visit to Israel in May. A Vatican delegation that was supposed to have visited Israel to work on the arrangements canceled its trip as a result, and it is now uncertain whether the pope’s visit will take place.

The diplomats have also stopped handling political appointments to ambassadorships, issuing diplomatic passports, transmitting diplomatic cables to intelligence and defense agencies, promoting economic and trade agreements and engaging in public diplomacy. Thus, for instance, Israeli missions abroad refused to disseminate any of the government’s talking points about the Iranian arms ship that Israel captured earlier this month, or to brief politicians and journalists in their host countries about it.

In addition, the diplomats have severed contact with UN institutions in New York, Geneva and Vienna, refusing even to attend Security Council debates or participate in votes. Consequently, Israel’s UN mission lodged no complaint with the UN sanctions committee on Iran over the capture of the Iranian arms ship, and without such a complaint, no international investigation can be opened on the matter.