After the Knesset voted to extend the mandatory military service period for males to 32 months, the chief of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate said Friday that the move did not replace the army’s immediate need for more troops.

“The extension of service… is an operational necessity to meet all the operational challenges before us and to allow a minimal breathing room for regular and reserve personnel, to preserve professional training durations, to stabilize units and to advance further force build-up on a limited scale,” said Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa in a missive to troops.

But Kalifa said the two-month extension to the mandatory service period “does not cancel the operational need of the IDF… to expand the scope of draftees and those serving from the entire Israeli public and to regulate this in an adapted reserve service law,” in reference to the ultra-Orthodox community, which the government is trying to exempt from service.

He said the Israel Defense Forces will still need a further extension to the mandatory service to “allow a broader force build-up.”

The IDF had sought to return the mandatory service period to the original 36 months, as it was until 2015. However, lawmakers only agreed to extend it from 30 months to 32 months. Under the current legislation, the mandatory service........

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