The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they unfold.

Israel Police is preventing the IDF Military Police from arresting draft evaders in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, according to a reported summary of a meeting held by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, on the enforcement of conscription as demanded by the High Court of Justice.

The Haaretz daily reports that Baharav-Miara confirmed the document to the outlet.

Representatives of the IDF at the meeting — the 12th on the matter — said that the police were not cooperative with the military on the matter, and were not giving the Military Police approval to operate in Haredi neighborhoods, according to the reported summary.

According to the representatives, ultra-Orthodox evaders who are arrested by Israel Police are not held, but rather are given a summons to the Military Police facility.

“Army officials even noted that according to police policy, members of the Haredi community arrested in random arrests by the police, who turn out during the detention to be deserters or evaders, are in fact released on their way,” the summary reportedly says.

The army has identified that 71,000 people are evading military service, 80 percent of them Haredim, according to data discussed in the meeting, media reports say.

While there has been a slight rise in the rate of Haredim joining the army under current circumstances, it is “far from fulfilling the needs of the army or the value of equality.”

The representatives said that the current bill to regulate exemptions for ultra-Orthodox students creates a negative incentive for them to join the military, since the legislation will restore state funding for yeshivas, and advised stronger economic sanctions to enforce conscription.

Hamas claims to have ambushed and killed members of Israeli-backed Gazan gangs in Khan Younis and Gaza City over the past day.

In a statement, the so-called Deterrent Force of Hamas’s internal security apparatus says it also confiscated military gear from the gang in Gaza City. In Khan Younis, some gang members fled, leaving behind their “Zionist weapons,” the Hamas force claims.

Hamas’s Sahm 103 unit, which targets people accused of collaborating with Israel, says the people targeted in the earlier ambush, in Khan Younis, were assaulted in the Batn al-Samin area, which lies on the Hamas-controlled side of the Gaza ceasefire line in the city’s southwest.

The Sahm unit claims the people targeted in Batn al-Samin were en route to perform a “kidnapping operation” on behalf of Israel. According to the unit, the gang members came in two vehicles, one of which managed to escape the ambush.

Neither Hamas statement specifies which gangs were targeted. However, Hossam al-Astal, who leads a Khan Younis-area anti-Hamas gang and has claimed to receive military aid from Israel, says in an evening video statement that his militia captured six Hamas operatives and killed several others in Batn al-Samin earlier today. He does not say anything about being ambushed by Hamas.

IDF troops........

© The Times of Israel