The coalition will propose a law that will bar any judicial review of ministerial appointments and pave the way for Shas chairman Arye Deri to return to the government as a minister. The High Court of Justice forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire him.
The amendment to the Basic Law: The Government states: “There will not be judicial review by any level of court about any matter connected to, or resulting from, the appointing a minister and removing him from his position, save for the appointment meeting the conditions of eligibility set out in section 6a and 6c alone.”
Section 6a requires the minister to be a resident and citizen of the State of Israel. Section 6c says a person who committed a crime that includes moral turpitude must wait seven years to serve as a minister. The coalition already amended this law in December so that it does not apply to Deri, which allowed Netanyahu to appoint him in the first place.
The proposed amendment will thus be the second amendment to a Basic Law intended to enable Deri to serve as a minister.
The accompanying text that explains the law argues that the appointment and removal of ministers is at the “heart of democratic activity” and therefore should not be put up for judicial review. High Court rulings over the years added new qualifications to the explicit list laid out in the law, and this led to “uncertainty regarding the fulfillment of the voter’s wishes and sometimes even bending the voter’s will to that of the government.”
The law proposes to block the High Court from examining the “reasonableness” or any other aspect of a minister’s appointment, save for the qualifications written explicitly in the law.
The law would enable Netanyahu to reappoint Deri as interior and health minister and presumably bar the High Court from striking down the appointment.
High Court ruling
The High Court ruled on January 18 in a 10-1 decision that Deri’s appointment as minister was “extremely unreasonable” both due to his criminal past and because he intentionally misled a court about a year ago when he promised that he would not rejoin politics to receive a lenient plea bargain for tax offenses.
Deri said he would continue to lead Shas, and Netanyahu also said he would do everything possible to keep Deri around the decision-makers’ table. Deri sat in on a national security cabinet meeting Saturday night at Netanyahu’s invitation as an observer.
Some judges of the majority refrained from ruling whether the appointment was reasonable, since misleading the court was enough to disqualify him. The minority opinion by Justice Yosef Elron was that Netanyahu was required to turn to the Central Elections Committee chairman, Supreme Court Justice Noam Solberg, to determine whether Deri’s actions in his 2022 conviction had included moral turpitude. If so, Deri would be barred from serving as a minister for seven years.
Deri may still remain an MK.
National Unity MK Gideon Sa’ar, the previous justice minister, said in response: “The coalition’s new shady deal, which is an attempt to violate a ruling by the High Court and appoint Deri, will fail a miserable failure just like the previous shady deals. The cynical and unconstrained attempt to prevent judicial review ‘for any reason’ is a disgrace.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday said opposition leader Yair Lapid’s warnings against the government’s judicial reforms were actually a “political campaign” intended on damaging Israel’s economy.
At a press conference ahead of his weekly Religious Zionist Party faction meeting, he cited a video that Lapid had posted on Sunday in which he allegedly said investments should be moved from Israel to Singapore.
“I want to turn to you Yair, as a former prime minister and finance minister, what happened to you?” Smotrich asked. “Do you even have a drop of responsibility? Have you become a support of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel]?”
“These moves by the opposition may, G-d forbid, bring about some damage in the short term,” he said. “But I am convinced that Israel’s economy is larger and stronger than them and will continue growing for many years along with the reforms we are bringing with the responsible and balanced budget next month.”
In response, Lapid said: “I fought BDS when Smotrich was still a hilltop youth. I suggest he uses terms whose meanings he understands.”
At a press conference before his Yesh Atid Party’s faction meeting, he said it was not him who was damaging the economy but the government. This was a consensus among more than 300 of Israel’s top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, Bank of Israel governors, some 50 former directors-general of economy-related ministries and a range of senior hi-tech executives, he added.
“Versus all of these professional voices stand only two people who are saying the opposite – one in the midst of a criminal trial, the other a convicted criminal – Prime Minister Netanyahu and the fired minister, Deri,” Lapid said. “They are the only people who are saying that the legislation will not damage the economy, and, voila, they are also the people who will personally benefit the most from it.”
“That is exactly the reason we said from day one: They cannot lead a reform against democracy because they are not coming from a clean place,” he said. “Their considerations are foreign, and from their perspective, their interests come before the good of the country.”
“Those who support this legislation should also know – it has a price,” Lapid said. “It will harm all of our livelihoods, raise the cost of living and make Israel less competitive and less efficient. That is the price, and whoever says otherwise is simply lying.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is facing pressure after the terrorist attacks over the weekend, on Monday told the press ahead of his party’s weekly meeting that the Neveh Ya’acov terrorist attack on Friday night came on his watch, and he intended to “act and fight” to defeat terrorism.
“The fight against terrorism starts from the small things,” he said, adding that he had ordered to implement demolition decrees against illegal buildings in east Jerusalem.
Other steps included rounding up illegal weapons and making it easier for law-abiding citizens to obtain weapons for self-defense, Ben-Gvir said. He also said he had demanded a curfew on the neighborhood of A-Tur where the terrorist came from and to go “house by house” to collect illegal weapons, but due to “differences of opinion with the professional bodies,” he did not do so.
Ben-Gvir said he had ordered law enforcement to scour social media to find anyone who holds an illegal weapon. Another response would be to legislate a death penalty for terrorists, he added.
National Unity chairman Benny Gantz, the previous defense minister, criticized what he claimed was the government’s impulsive response to the security situation.
“The government will receive my support for every responsible step that will strengthen security on all fronts,” he said. “However, I am very concerned about what I saw in recent days – ‘instant’ proposals that do not rely on intelligence, or proposals of the defense bodies that are infiltrating the cabinet meetings, which are being held like a neighborhood assembly.”
“After the Sabbath, when millions were learning about the severe slaughter, the first thing that instigators of chaos Ben-Gvir and his extreme cronies did was to complain about how much time it takes to seal off a house and to search for those to blame,” Gantz said.
“Now it is the legal advisers; then it will be the media and the Left,” he said. “With spin you do not defeat terrorism but inflame hate and evade responsibility.”
Gantz said Netanyahu had the ultimate responsibility and was “conducting these shows of hatred. Words turn to violence in the streets, and the prime minister is silent.”
Israel’s security would be damaged by the judicial reform, since security was “first and foremost the strength of society,” he said.