Overview
- Israeli media estimated roughly 200,000 participants as crowds blocked highways and shut the city’s central train station during a prayer‑focused rally against drafting yeshiva students.
- Police deployed about 2,000 officers and reported a fatality after a teenager fell from a nearby construction site, with Israel’s Magen David Adom saying dozens were injured during clashes.
- Reporters, soldiers and police were attacked in several incidents, including Channel 12’s Inbar Twizer, who was pelted with objects while on air.
- Organizers said the gathering responded to intensified enforcement, including arrests and jailing of draft refusers, and drew backing from leading Haredi rabbis as well as figures in Religious Zionism and Chabad.
- The protest follows a Supreme Court ruling ending blanket exemptions for full‑time yeshiva students, with a Knesset committee slated to take up a new conscription bill next week as coalition tensions rise.