One of the central promises advanced by Israel’s opposition parties is the enactment of a universal draft law. Against the backdrop of the sweeping military exemptions and extensive state benefits granted to the ultra-Orthodox community under successive Netanyahu governments, the proposal is often presented as a long-overdue step toward equality. After all, who could oppose equality?

Yet behind this appealing slogan lies an uncomfortable truth. A universal draft law does not necessarily create civic equality. At best, it equalizes obligations while leaving inequalities of citizenship untouched. Rather than dismantling Israel’s existing hierarchy, it risks legitimizing it.

Put differently, it seeks to increase the number of people who serve without increasing the number of people who are treated as equals.

In any democracy, equality begins not with obligations but with rights. Only a state that recognizes all of its citizens as equal can legitimately demand equal burdens from them. It is therefore worth paying close attention to the language used by Israel’s opposition leaders. They speak of “a draft for all” and of “sharing the burden”, yet they rarely speak about equal citizenship. This omission is hardly accidental. Since Israel’s founding, successive governments have avoided explicitly enshrining the principle of equality in a Basic Law with constitutional status. As long as equality itself remains absent from Israel’s constitutional framework, calls for “equal burden-sharing” deserve careful scrutiny.

The debate over military service is therefore not fundamentally about defense policy. It is a debate about citizenship. Before asking who must serve, one must ask who is recognized as an equal member of the political community. A state that demands equal........

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