rabbiofberlin: Discretion to a government official is fairly meaningless. So someone gets a job, and next election the discretion changes. As it is, most jobs outside of “informal sector” or the “hareidi economy” are closed to hareidim, and having revocable permission isn’t going to help. Its like saying “you can work as a temp, but that’s it”. A law prohibiting discrimination (rejected last year) would help.
And it doesn’t solve the threshold question of conscription which the Israeli courts have held is non-discretionary (absent a Basic Law to overrule the courts). If any hareidim are being thrown in jail for refusing to serve in the army (whether because they insist on learning full time, or feel the army discriminates and fails to accomodate them, or because they hold that zionism is contrary to Torah), then most hareidim will refuse to serve.
If the zionists were serious about compromise, the only sanction for hareidim refusing to serve would be loss of yeshiva subsidies and being treated like a Palestinian citizen in terms of welfare state participation. If they were serious about hareidim contributing to the “official” (on the books) economy, they would legislate that hareidim are able to work to the same extent as those Palestinians who don’t want to serve in the IDF, and pass an anti-discrimination law.