IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir announced Wednesday that a trial program integrating women into tank units will start in November, even as roughly one-third of hesder yeshivas that supply many religious Zionist combat soldiers voiced opposition.

Zamir stressed the effort will result in no more than a single company of tanks operated by women, representing only a modest addition compared with the numerous existing tank brigades, battalions and companies throughout the force.

He further required that any female tank personnel satisfy the same physical standards applied to male soldiers. Past integration trials in other combat fields produced elevated injury rates among women during training, an outcome he said must be prevented.

On June 11, twenty-five hesder yeshivas declared they would bar their Orthodox students from the tank corps in protest of the planned trial.

The IDF described the initiative as strictly a pilot whose long-term continuation remains undecided.

Female tank units to remain separate

The trial will create exclusively female tank formations, ensuring that neither secular nor religious male soldiers serve alongside women inside the same vehicle or subunit, addressing the chief concern raised by protesting religious institutions.

From the yeshivas perspective, mixed crews would raise issues of modesty and unwanted interaction in the confined space of a tank.

Religious Zionist hesder graduates have traditionally served in all-male units, frequently composed largely of other hesder students or men from Orthodox backgrounds.

The IDF values the hesder arrangement because its participants, despite shorter service periods, overwhelmingly choose combat roles and frequently advance to mid- and senior-officer positions.

Nevertheless, the High Court of Justice ruled on April 13 that the IDF must expand equal opportunity for women in combat positions and begin the long-delayed tank-corps integration trial with the November 2026 draft.

IDF seeks additional combat personnel

With ongoing shortfalls in haredi recruitment and roughly twenty-five thousand soldiers sidelined by injury or trauma since October 2023, the IDF has intensified efforts to draw women into combat specialties.

Recent milestones include acceptance of a woman into the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit and appointment of women to brigade- and battalion-level ground combat commands as well as command of a missile boat.

Although the IDF reiterated last week that it would keep tank units segregated by gender, the number of hesder yeshivas opting out nearly doubled to twenty-five on June 11.

Two-thirds of hesder institutions have so far declined to withdraw. Some are monitoring whether the pilot maintains separate female units, unlike current mixed-gender arrangements in artillery and infantry.