JERUSALEM — The Knesset is nearing a moment of truth: It has to vote by the end of the month whether to finally draft ultra-Orthodox men into the Israeli army. A proposed law that would lift a long-standing exception allowing Haredi men to avoid military service while they studied the Torah seemed all but ready to pass. Until a last-minute dispute over what to do with anyone who tries to dodge their duty.

The so-called Haredi draft was one of the main reasons that Israel’s previous governing coalition collapsed. The most significant reform under consideration by the current government, it is once again threatening to bring about a “full-scale political crisis,” as one political leader involved with the legislative process told me Monday.

In 2012, Israel’s High Court ruled that the exemption for Haredim amounted to unequal treatment under the law and was unlawful. Since then and under pressure from the public, the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — which contains no Haredi parties — has been hashing out the details of a conscription bill for Orthodox men.

The effort was spearheaded by the Zionist-religious Habayit Hayehudi and the centrist Yesh Atid parties, but now they are at loggerheads over how to deal with Haredi draft-dodgers. Legislators from Habayit Hayehudi say: Fine them, for example, by withdrawing housing subsidies. Legislators from Yesh Atid say: Jail them, as is done with others.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/a-fine-or-do-time/?hp&rref=opinion