Finance Minister Yair Lapid announced on Feb. 5 his joy over the High Court of Justice decision to halt the funding transfer to rabbinical colleges whose students had deferred their enlistment to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). But the truth is, he does not have real cause for celebration.

The High Court astonished the political system and shocked the ultra-Orthodox. As expected, they harshly lambasted the High Court and accused it of ongoing persecution. In the words of Knesset member Moshe Gafni (Yahadut HaTorah), it was a “declaration of war.” The significance of the ruling is the freeze in the transfer of about 10 million shekels [$2.8 million] to the rabbinical colleges. In their dramatic decision, the justices clarified that they were forced to adopt this extreme measure due to the government and the Knesset's continuing to ignore the court’s verdict of nearly two years ago on Feb. 21, 2012, in which it demanded that ultra-Orthodox conscription must be immediately regularized by law.

This step of the High Court is clear testimony to the failure of the current government — in which Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid plays a central, high-level role — to legislate the Equal Sharing of the Burden law and institutionalize the drafting of the ultra-Orthodox into the IDF. In effect, it was the government that forced the High Court justices to assume the “bad cop” role of “abusing” the ultra-Orthodox and turned themselves into an easy target for the ultra-Orthodox sector. “The High Court has long since been infamous as the enemy of the ultra-Orthodox public in its discriminatory verdicts,” announced Knesset member Meir Porush. For his part, former ultra-Orthodox Shas Party Chairman Eli Yishai defiantly submitted a bill that would halt subsidizing institutions of higher education in which the percentage of draft-dodgers studying there was higher than 20%.

Lapid, more than any other government minister, bears special responsibility to bring an end to this saga because the ultra-Orthodox draft issue was one of his main election promises. The “fraternal alliance” he created with HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett, leaving the ultra-Orthodox outside the government, was supposed to create an historic, one-time opportunity to put an end to ultra-Orthodox draft-dodging. Lapid and Bennett agreed in advance to disagree on the diplomatic front, but promised to cooperate on reforms and substantive changes for the welfare of the Zionist middle class. The burden-sharing issue was a crucial linchpin in this deal.