UN humanitarian chief appeals for aid access as Gaza faces ‘total’ blockade

BNEI BRAK, Israel: One of Israel’s most divisive domestic issues has reared itself again to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a group in the ruling coalition said it would bring the government down unless it exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from army service.
Some members of United Torah Judaism, one of two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in the coalition, said in a letter that they would vote against the budget if the government did not pass a new law formalising exemptions for religious students.
“If this matter is once again sidelined or delayed for any reason, we will not be able to continue as partners in the coalition,” said the March 6 letter signed by Housing Minister and party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf and two others.
The government must pass the budget by the end of the month or call snap elections. United Torah Judaism holds seven seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
It is too early to predict the consequences. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a proven master at smoothing over disagreements in his coalitions. An ultra-nationalist group that quit the government over the ceasefire in Gaza in January announced on Tuesday it was returning.
But pollster Mitchell Barak, who worked for Netanyahu in the 1990s, said this time ultra-Orthodox politicians appeared unwilling to compromise, and the prime minister might have to look outside the coalition for support to pass the budget, an extraordinary step.
“He’s going to look for someone who can compromise, save him, and be that ‘freyer’,” he said, speaking before the ultra-nationalists announced their return to the coalition and using a Yiddish word for someone who lets others take advantage of him. “That’s how he operates.”
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on the ultra-Orthodox ultimatum and whether he believed the budget could pass without their support.

MILITARY STRAINED
In Israel, military service is mandatory at age 18, after which Israelis become reservists liable to be called up for training or deployment.
But dating back to Israel’s founding in 1948 it made an exemption for ultra-Orthodox communities, known as Haredim, whose young men mainly dedicate their lives to studying religious texts in academies known as yeshivot.
Those communities were initially small but have grown rapidly in the following decades. According to government data, there are now 1.4 million Haredim, accounting for about 14 percent of the population, deepening resentment among other Israelis who are conscripted.
In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the exemption was unconstitutional, and last year it ordered the military to conscript yeshiva students. Legal experts say the only way to restore the exemption would be to pass a new law enshrining it.
Members of the Haredi community say they would resist any attempt to conscript their children.
“They can put us in prison,” said Yehoshua Menuchin at his home in Bnei Brak, a densely populated city close to Tel Aviv where many Haredim live.
Menuchin, who has a 19-year-old son who is not serving, said the debate was driven by politics, rather than by genuine military need.
“If it’s a matter of survival, like an Arab invasion, then the Haredim will be the first to volunteer in order to save lives. But as long as it is political, it won’t ever happen.”
But 18 months into war in Gaza and major military operations in the West Bank and Lebanon, resentment is growing, and many lawmakers say the exemption is unjustifiable.
“They don’t know what 30 days of reserve duty a year is, and they don’t know what it is to dread that knock on the door,” centrist opposition lawmaker Elazar Stern, a former general, told Reuters, referring to the moment a parent learns of a child’s death in service.

DIVINE INTERVENTION
The Haredim live in insular neighborhoods centered around strict religious observance, with their own schools that largely eschew math and science. They have twice as many children as the national average, rely heavily on state welfare and charity, and those who work are often in low-paying jobs.
They believe that sending their children to the military is an existential threat, fearing that exposure to secular Israelis and outside influences could undermine their way of life.
“I know one thing: we must go the way the Torah instructs us,” said Meir Zvi Bergman, one of Israel’s most widely followed Haredi rabbis. “God does not want us to go, so we won’t go.”
The army says it is working to create conditions to make it easier for more Haredim to serve, such as dedicated battalions with strict religious practices, including regular prayer and gender segregation.
“The responsibility to defend the country must be shared fairly,” Eyal Zamir, Israel’s new chief of the military staff, said in a speech this month taking up his post. (Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Steven Scheer)

JERUSALEM: Relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday of sacrificing their loved ones by carrying out a wave of deadly strikes that threatened a fragile truce.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had received no response to its request to meet with Netanyahu and other officials to hear how the remaining hostages would be “protected from the military pressure.”
“Now it becomes clear — the public officials did not meet with them because they were planning the explosion of the ceasefire, which could sacrifice their family members,” the campaign group said.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s unprecedented October 2023 attack which sparked the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The overngith air strikes were by far the deadliest since a January ceasefire that largely halted the fighting and saw the handover of 33 hostages, both alive and dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory said at least 413 people were killed in the strikes.
The forum called on supporters of the hostages to cemonstrate outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, warning that “military pressure could further endanger their lives and complicate efforts to bring them back safe and sound.”
“The families of the hostages will demand: Stop the killing and disappearance of the hostages now! First, return them — then everything else.”
The return of the hostages is a priority for the majority of Israelis.
“This morning, the moment we realized that we were going back to war, the first thing I thought about was: what about the hostages? This is a death sentence for the hostages, and it’s simply terrible,” said Muriel Aranov, a 62-year-old pensioner living in Tel Aviv.
As protesters headed to Jerusalem, Netanyahu took part in a security assessment with defense officials in Tel Aviv, including Defense Minister Israel Katz, his office said.
An earlier statement from Netanyahu’s office said the strikes were ordered after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.”
“We are at an impasse, we have said ‘yes’ more than once to concrete proposals from the US special envoy to extend the ceasefire, and Hamas has said ‘no’,” foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said in a briefing.
“From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increased military intensity,” he added.