This Sunday, Israel is scheduled for a political crisis.

At midnight Israel time on April 1, the government will hit a deadline for changing its policy on the military draft. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will then be required to send conscription notices to roughly 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men, who had been previously exempted by a law carving out special privileges for students at religious academies, or yeshivot.

This might sound like an obscure internal Israeli political fight, but it actually has the potential to alter the entire trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The conscription issue splits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government apart at the seams. Netanyahu depends on ultra-Orthodox parties for his parliamentary majority; if he permits mass conscription of yeshiva students, they’ll abandon him. But if he gives the ultra-Orthodox what they want, he’ll run afoul of key members of his own right-wing Likud party, potentially prompting their defections.

These scenarios both end the same way: with the collapse of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and new elections, which Likud would (per every poll) lose by a wide margin. Netanyahu’s defeat would almost certainly usher his more centrist rival Benny Gantz into power. And while some of Gantz’s policies toward the war and the Palestinians would look the same, they would likely differ on some critical issues — including the all-important questions of Gaza’s political future and a Palestinian state.

Steve G. wrote:
The 13% sitting on their asses in yeshivas while everyone else faces death to defend Israel.

"Maimonides also adds and writes, 'in Milkhemet Mitzvah [war of obligation], everyone goes into battle, even a groom from his room and a bride from her wedding canopy.'"

Most observers don’t think the State of Israel will enforce the draft until a new IDF draft law is legislated with the assent of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the government.