The growing number of people refusing to serve, letters of protest and officers’ lack of desire to have an army career are all raising concerns about the very near future of the IDF

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi’s biggest and most immediate concern these days is neither Iran nor the Palestinian uprising that everyone expects to break out soon. Rather, it’s the fear that the army will disintegrate.

Last Friday, Dr. Hadas Minka Brand attended a General Staff meeting at army headquarters in Tel Aviv. To do so, she had to cut short a private event that had been scheduled long before.

Minka Brand heads the IDF’s behavioral sciences unit, and as such, she also advises the chief of staff and the General Staff about issues connected to this subject. The unit’s goal is to apply the findings of psychological and sociological research to improve and nurture the IDF’s human capital.

The growing protests against the legal overhaul that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is carrying out at breakneck speed – to the anti-government protest movement and opposition leaders, it is simply a legal coup d’etat bordering on regime change – are severely undermining the day-to-day functioning of the IDF. They also make it harder for the Manpower Directorate, which the behavioral sciences unit is part of, to plan for the army’s staffing needs in the medium and long term. And above all, they are eroding the morale and motivation of soldiers in both compulsory service and the reserves, and undermining the ethos of “the people’s army.”

Minka Brand’s job is to study and analyze these trends and then advise Halevi on how to cope with the fact that refusal to serve in the army is gaining public legitimacy.

The fact that a growing segment of the population is refusing to serve stems from two simultaneous developments. One is the legal overhaul. The second is a provision of the current government’s coalition agreement that would exempt the ultra-Orthodox from military service not just de facto, as is the case today, but de jure.

This challenge is the main reason for Halevi’s speech last Thursday at a graduation ceremony for combat officers in the grounds forces, in which he said the political dispute should be left outside the army.

“IDF soldiers are subject to the law and the army’s orders and act in accordance with the IDF’s spirit and values,” he said. “We will be attentive to soldiers’ feelings about the dispute, not in order to take sides, but to leave it outside and maintain a single IDF that’s united around its complex missions.”

Yet this speech indicates that the army brass is to some extent disconnected from reality. The dam has already burst, and the dispute has already penetrated the army.

With every passing day, the chief of staff, General Staff officers and commanders in the field are seeing more and more reservists announcing that they won’t report for duty or that they are at least considering the option. Others say that if they do obey call-up orders to avoid breaking the law, they will ask to be given unimportant jobs in the rear and will try to evade combat or routine security missions.

Something that may worry Halevi even more is that young officers in the career army – lieutenants, captains and majors – who need to decide whether to renew their contracts are increasingly turning down their commanders’ entreaties to do so. The behavioral sciences unit is finding it hard to motivate them by appealing to values like Zionism and contributing to the country when the “fully right-wing” government’s policies are dividing society and making tears in its delicate fabric.

Just how many reservists are now reluctant to serve remains unknown. But based on cautious estimates and conversations with their former commanders, both senior and junior, thousands are either hesitating or outright refusing to show up for duty. The number is certainly many times higher than what has been reported in the media.

According to these reports, reservist pilots and navigators, who are called up both for training and for operational duty (conducting airstrikes in the Gaza Strip or in Syria), are signaling that they will refuse to show up.

In addition, some 200 reservists in the special operations unit attached to Military Intelligence wrote a letter saying that if the legal overhaul laws pass, they will refuse to do reserve duty. This unit is one of the IDF’s most classified. It works in close cooperation with elite special forces units like Sayeret Matkal and the naval commandos, as well as with the Mossad espionage agency and the Shin Bet security service. Most of its operations are classified; they are made public only rarely, usually due to snafus.

In a rare move, some 500 former Shin Bet agents signed a petition against Netanyahu’s legal overhaul, though as prime minister, Netanyahu is in charge of both the Shin Bet and the Mossad. That petition is also – and perhaps primarily – aimed at Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, who headed the Shin Bet during the second intifada (2000 to 2004) and at that time was thought of as thoroughly decent and well-liked.

Many of his former subordinates can’t understand how someone who once belonged to the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and served as public security minister under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could have changed his political views so completely. Some attribute his pro-Netanyahu statements to his belief that he will someday become prime minister.

Former Mossad employees are now trying to organize a similar petition. In addition, Mossad Director David Barnea has allowed current employees whose rank is below the level of department head to participate in the popular anti-government demonstrations, though he forbade protest activity by any department heads or anyone holding a higher position. Barnea gave his permission following several discussions among senior Mossad officials and authorization from the agency’s legal adviser, which was necessary because civil service regulations normally bar civil servants from being involved in political activity.

The growing refusal to serve is coming at a particularly tough time for the IDF. The holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which tends to bring more Palestinian unrest even in normal times, will begin in another month. Palestinians jailed in Israel have announced that they will launch a hunger strike on the eve of holiday.

Assessments by the research departments of Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet as well as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories all say there are growing signs that a wave of rioting, violence and terror attacks could erupt in the West Bank in late March, then spread to East Jerusalem and spark rocket fire from Gaza as well. This could lead to a new intifada.

Since the start of the year, there has been a major rise in both the number of terror attacks and the number of incursions into West Bank cities conducted by the army and the Shin Bet. As a result, there has also been a surge in the number of Palestinian deaths, both armed men and uninvolved civilians; the latter are estimated at around 50.

Both the IDF and the Shin Bet are drawing up scenarios for a wave of violent unrest and preparing plans for how to deploy if it happens. But it’s clear to the General Staff that conscript soldiers won’t be able to suppress a new intifada on their own. Such a situation would require calling up tens of thousands of reservists from the ground forces, the air force and the intelligence corps.

Yet if the government’s decision to weaken the judiciary and control it continues and protests against it intensify and turn into civil disobedience, refusal to serve in the military will expand to dimensions that could threaten the IDF with collapse. Halevi will make every effort to ensure that this doesn’t happen on his watch. But it’s far from clear that he will be able to control the process.