The defense minister is empowered by law to defer the induction of those whose sole pursuit is devotional study; in 1995 the provision was applied to male students in 565 yeshivot, nearly all of them haredi. Opponents of the deferments argue that Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, who endorsed this arrangement soon after independence, intended to exempt only the several hundred men who followed this calling at that time, in deference to the devastation of the European centers of Orthodoxy during the Holocaust. The 1959 Security Service Law, however, set no limit. The IDF, over-supplied with recruits and ill-equipped to deal with the resentment and logistic problems that inducted yeshiva students would bring along, is not sorry to bestow this deferment.

This issue smolders and flares, with more flaring of late as (1) deferments mount both in absolute and relative terms; (2) the population at large has a less positive attitude about bearing arms as a social value; (3) half of the deferments turn into permanent exemptions; (4) growing numbers of the draft-deferred young have begun expressing hard-line political views that, many mainstream Israelis believe, should correspond to an eagerness to serve; (5) the honor system that underlies the deferment mechanism is sometimes dishonored.

In late 1997, the idea of a deferment quota was in the air. In the autumn, the army asked the Defense Ministry to institute one; the ministry declined. Two back door attacks on the policy, in the form of petitions asking the High Court of Justice to force the defense system to limit deferments under the "reasonability" doctrine, were pending.