The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the Israel Defense Forces (FDI) to intensify the offensive about the city of Gaza, despite the internal and international condemnation.
Amid the accusations of the International Association of Scholars of the Genocide that Israel is committing genocide, some 40,000 reservists were called to render on Tuesday, August 2. Another 90,000 is expected to mobilize by the end of the first quarter of 2026. But the reports suggest that the number of people willing to accept their requests is decreasing.
Israel has mandatory military service for those who leave high school for a period of 18 to 36 months, with some exceptions. This is followed by the mandatory reserve tax for some units, normally until the age of 40. Following the attacks of October 7, 2023 against Israel by Hamas, it was reported that 360,000 reservists were called to the service, together with the 100,000 high school students who left the high school in active duty.
This was one of the greatest mobilizations in the history of Israel. There was an unprecedented response rate of 120%, since the Israelis joined around the flag and other people who were not subject to the call chose to serve.
After almost two years of fighting by Israel, the reports suggest that the commanders are now struggling to find enough reservists willing to serve. Some calculations show a 30% drop in reserves deployment. Kan, the national station of Israel, places the decrease closer to 50%.
The reasons vary among those who choose not to fulfill their reservation duty. A report from the Israeli media of the left, +972mag, estimates that only about 1,500, approximately 1.5%, of the soldiers who denied between October 2023 and April 2025 did so for ideological and ethical concerns.
The majority refused because it tired of a war that does not achieve a resolution or return to Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Many suffer from exhaustion, both physical and emotional.
Whatever their motivations, the lack of will of a part of the Israeli reserve soldiers to continue fighting raises a potential problem for Netanyahu in their search to eradicate Hamas in Gaza or in the realization of wars on other fronts. In a nutshell, IDF cannot carry out their operations without enough soldiers.
Even if rejection numbers do not reach that turning point, their public rejection statements have political influence. Historically, Israelis have refused to serve as a means to challenge the policies of the Israeli government.
A distinction must be made between the least number of Israeli adolescents who refuse to enlist in the IDF completely and those who have rejected their reserve service. Some who refuse to go to high school are declared “conscientious objectors.” They tend to do so for ideological contempt for the IDF and in rejection of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians.
A 2021 rejection letter from a group of high school students explained it: “It is our duty to oppose this destructive reality joining our struggles and refusing to serve these violent systems, the main one to the military.”
As I discovered in my research on Israeli peace and the activism against occupation, these adolescents tend to be discarded as radical anarchists. The reservists who refuse to return to serve are not well received by the majority of Israeli society, but they are given a certain degree of support and sympathy because they have already served in the IDF, thus fulfilling their national duty.
As a recent denial wrote in an opinion article in the New York Times, “refusing to serve is not a betrayal of the State. Refusing is the only way to save it.”
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The history of Israel of the military ‘refuses’
The first significant wave of rejection of reservists occurred with the outbreak of the First War of Lebanon in 1982. Almost 3,000 reservists signed a request in which they claimed that they did not join Israel’s defense forces to “solve the Palestinian problem through war.” Some 160 were imprisoned. A movement called Yesh Gvul (there is a limit) arose that promoted subsequent waves of rejection of reservists and has supported the imprisoned.
The movement encouraged the selective rejection of serving in the occupied Palestinian territories in response to the brutal repression of the Israeli army of the first Palestinian uprising in 1987. As the Israeli academic Benjamin Kidron pointed out in his book Refuseik!, They made a difference between the “legitimate” duties of the FDI in the defense of Israel and the “unacceptable” assignments in the territories occupied.
During the second intifada, which began in 2000, there was a new wave of selective rejection, and the reserves won some legitimacy to “speaking with the authority of having come directly from the field.”
Rejection threats were also used as a lever for other problems that dominate Israeli society. In the apogee of protests against the judicial reforms proposed in the summer of 2023, 1,000 elite Israeli combat pilots refused to serve until the reforms were abandoned. They cited government plans as a threat to Israeli democracy.
With an increasing number of Israelis who take a public position against the Israeli government, the wave of soldiers who refuse to serve could affect Netanyahu’s ability to continue his assault on Gaza as planned. But as they demonstrated the last two years, Netanyahu was not persuaded by national or international pressure to leave his war against Gaza. It is unlikely to change course now.
*Leonie Fleischmann is a Professor of International Policy at City St George’s of the University of London.
This article was originally published in The Conversation/Reuters
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