It is often said that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but the High Court of Justice bucked that notion on Wednesday when it quickly froze the implementation of a law passed less than 24 hours earlier that had sought to ban authorities from arresting members of the ultra-Orthodox community who refuse to comply with military draft orders.

The court said that previous rulings on the issue, as well as “weighty arguments” against the law, justified temporarily freezing implementation until it can hold an initial hearing on the matter.

The unusually rapid intervention, coupled with the already critical and skeptical language of the court regarding the legislation, appears to indicate even at this early stage that the law will not survive judicial review.

An initial hearing on the law will now be held in short order, likely followed by an interim order freezing implementation of the law until there is a final decision, which in all likelihood will strike down the law for good.

Despite the raucous tussle in the Knesset on Tuesday as coalition MKs passed the law in its final readings, the legislation was always destined to be a long shot.

Flagrantly discriminatory, the law confers immunity from arrest for draft-dodging on a single segment of the population. And it appears to directly contravene numerous High Court rulings on the matter requiring greater equality in the sharing of the military burden.

On top of that, it was passed despite bitter opposition from the IDF, which is in dire need of more soldiers amid the country’s ongoing wars.

But it is precisely because of the blatant way the law violates the principle of equality, and how it seeks to circumvent very recent High Court rulings demanding that criminal sanctions be enforced against Haredi draft dodgers, that the High Court is likely to strike down this measure in a final ruling.

The terms of the law are relatively simple. No arrests, enforcement action or investigations can be conducted by police and the IDF against ultra-Orthodox draft-dodgers, currently numbering some 72,000 souls, if they are studying in a yeshiva. The law expires on November 30, although it will in practice extend until February.

As the court indicated in its order on Wednesday, the legislation seems to........

© The Times of Israel