Netanyahu's Likud Party agrees in part but insists that to force the Haredim - a population of about 700,000 - into the army in "one fell swoop" after 64 years of exemption is impossible.
"I would like to see the Haredim join the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] at 18 years old," Moshe Ya'alon, Strategic Affairs Minister and an ally of Netanyahu's, told Israel's Army Radio last week. "But if we try this, we will start a civil war."
The debate has gripped the Jewish state. For Israel's ultra-Orthodox, the preservation of the Haredim's right to study rather than serve represents a battle for the preservation of the Jewish people, pitting the value of the body against the worth of the soul.
In Haredi communities the mood is defiant. Mea Shearim is a closed, strictly ultra-Orthodox community on the outskirts of Jerusalem's Old City.
Men in broad hats and frockcoats walk the streets quickly, their eyes cast to the ground. Life here has not changed for hundreds of years and no one thinks it will change now.
Yossi, 28, said: "About 50 per cent of people here do not hold Israeli IDs. They were here hundreds of years before Israel. The Government can do whatever it wants; the people here will go and sit in jail rather than go to the army. They will never serve."
Yossi did serve in the army but he describes himself as religious rather than Orthodox.
"My father didn't speak to me when I joined the army. He said, 'I'm not your father any more.' But after two years he got over it. I think a little differently. I believe if you take from the Government you have to give back to it."
This is the opinion of most Israelis, many of whom are outraged that the state pours money into a community that does not work, typically has large numbers of children, and does not pay taxes or serve in the military.
About 20,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand that the country's Orthodox and Arab citizens share the burden of military service. Senior retired military figures and political leaders, including former opposition leader Tzipi Livni, joined the crowd of protesters, calling for "one people, one draft".
Yosam Merav, a 16-year-old from Tel Aviv, stood with his father in front of sign reading "the suckers tent". He said: "I'm about to be enlisted. I'm happy to serve but I want to feel like the country I serve is a country where everything is equal. I don't want to feel like a sucker."
Yaakov Uri, who runs a pizza parlour in Geula, an Orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem, said the problem was that secular Israelis like Yosam had no understanding of the sacrifices religious Jews make for them. "You think it's so easy to sit and study all day, bring up seven children on US$700 a month? No, it's very hard," he said.
These men, in his opinion, are as critical for the defence of Israel as the army. They provide spiritual protection. "The Torah is saving and guarding the Jews."
As a compromise, he suggested that yeshiva students who were not truly devoted to Torah studies - around one-third, he thought - should serve in the army. But this was provided, of course, that they were served kosher food, given time to pray and segregated from women.
Like Uri, Yakov Horowitz believes the current crisis is the result of the ignorance of secular Israelis. Formerly a barrister in the United States, he is now an Orthodox rabbi running a religious school in Mea Shearim.
"The burden is equal already, shared between the body and the soul. If the soul is not getting an equal part in the battle against our enemies, we will lose. It would be a fatal mistake."
Horowitz warned that, if the Haredim were pushed into the army, the result would be explosive. People who valued the Haredim's role in society, he said, would protect it "by any means possible".
- Observer
