Following a monthlong recess over the Passover holiday and Independence Day, the Knesset began its summer legislative session on Monday, ushering in a surge of activity as lawmakers seek to pass a wide variety of bills whose advancement was halted during the break.

The new session is expected to be marked by fierce arguments over a range of issues from ultra-Orthodox conscription to government to efforts to silence public media outlets and weaken the power of the attorney general.

Here are some of the bills to watch out for over the coming months.

The Knesset’s summer session got off to a rocky start on Tuesday when both of the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox parties said they would boycott votes on coalition legislation on Wednesday, in protest of the government’s failure to pass a law exempting yeshiva students from military service.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, coalition partners have been pushing for the passage of legislation enshrining military exemptions for their community, after the High Court ruled in June last year that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal since they were not based in law.

Despite the prime minister’s assurances to his ultra-Orthodox allies, the legislation, angrily referred to by critics as an “evasion law,” has long been held up in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Yuli Edelstein (Likud), has pledged that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”

Addressing a conference organized by the national-religious broadsheet Makor Rishon on Tuesday, Edelstein said that after exhaustive debate, his committee was “one step away” from drafting a new version of the law.

If the bill fails to pass, or if it passes in a format that does not maintain widespread Haredi exemptions, it could significantly threaten the stability of the coalition.

On Monday evening, UTJ lawmaker Yaakov Asher told Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat that if the military exemptions were not legislated by the end of the summer session, his party would  no longer be able to remain in the government.

UTJ’s exit would not topple the government but it would leave it with a bare 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has resumed debating a controversial bill intended to grant state rabbinic courts the power to arbitrate civil proceedings according to religious law if both parties consent.

While its backers say that the measure would allow for “legal pluralism,” critics believe that, if passed, it would significantly harm women.

According to the ITIM nonprofit — which helps Israelis navigate the country’s religious bureaucracy — the religious court system, whose judges are all men, “is fundamentally male-oriented, which naturally raises concerns about structural harm to women’s rights, even if unintentional.”

In addition, “religious courts are not bound by the protective laws that the state has enacted to protect workers’ rights,” the group said in a position paper late last year.

The coalition is also pushing a variety of bills that critics warn are intended to silence detractors and weaken oversight, including a measure to dilute the powers of the attorney general and create a new criminal prosecution service, putting the government in charge of who heads it.

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