IDF soldiers outside Gaza
IDF soldiers outside GazaFlash 90

Mandatory service for men, which was cut from 36 months to 32 months in 2015, will be cut again, this time to 30 months, in the year 2020.

The Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved on Monday morning sections 42 and 43 in the Law of Regulations (not to be confused with Amona's Regulation Law), which deal with the issue of shortening the period of mandatory IDF service for men.

The new amendment will affect only the service of men who drafted into the IDF from the year 2020 and on.

MK Amir Ohana (Likud), who chairs the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's Subcommittee for Manpower in the IDF, said, "This process will help raise the IDF's efficiency, as well as faster integration of Israel's youth into post-army civilian life."

"This is good news for both the general civilian population, and the soldiers themselves. It won't hurt Israel's security, which is always top priority for us," Ohana added.

It should be noted that the previous decision to shorten men's mandatory service from 36 months to 32 months is already creating a crisis in which the IDF simply does not have enough soldiers. Then, as well as now, the decision to shorten men's service comes on the heels of the decision to open more combat units to female applicants, despite experts' warnings (and proofs) that such a move dangerously lowers a unit's combat abilities.

Since Israel must still deal with the Iran threat, as well as chemical weapons in the hands of terrorists on Israel's northern border, Hamas' terror tunnels in Gaza, and an intifada lasting over a year (including an arson intifada), the decision to integrate women into combat units and shorten men's mandatory service may prove more dangerous than the Israeli public would like to admit.