Even as there was no decision, there was no ambiguity on Sunday about the High Court of Justice’s view of the radical change in November to the law about haredim serving in the IDF, with Justice Uzi Vogelman telling the state that “you’ve created a monster.”

The law passed in November pushed back targets for inducting haredim from 2014- 2017 to 2020 and beyond, and essentially eliminated criminal sanctions for draft-dodging ultra-Orthodox men by giving the defense minister nearly unlimited discretion to exempt them from meetings the targets.

The other justices on the nine-justice panel hearing petitions from Yesh Atid and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel to strike down the law as unconstitutional were not much more hospitable to the state.

The state’s lawyer Donna Briskman told the court that “currently, the legislature legislated in a way that is not equal, because we are in a complex process and a situation that is not simple.

The Knesset and the government hope that the law will lead to attaining equality and maybe at the end of the period [in 2023] they will say that the regular law,” which requires all citizens to be drafted, applies.