The coalition enlisted the support of all its members as signatories and co-authors of a new bill that will enable Shas chairman MK Arye Deri to return to his positions as Interior and Health Minister, a Shas source confirmed on Tuesday.
The bill, an amendment to Basic Law: The Government, proposes to block the High Court of Justice’s ability to intervene in the prime minister’s prerogative to appoint ministers. This would enable Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reappoint Deri, after the court on January 18 ruled that he must fire him due to the “extreme unreasonableness” of his appointment despite three criminal convictions.
A joint proposal by all members
Groups of MKs may propose bills together. Although the text, which was leaked to the press on Monday, was composed by a team of lawyers headed by Shas MK Moshe Arbel, the coalition on Monday began to gather signatures in order to make the bill a joint proposal of every member of the coalition, other than MKs who are ministers or deputy ministers, the source said.
The coalition hopes that this indication of wide consensus will sway the High Court from blocking the law, should it be appealed.
The High Court has never blocked amendments to Basic Laws, but has said in previous rulings that it had the power to do so if the Knesset abused its power as the body responsible for drafting Israel’s constitution.
The law proposal, should it be appealed, may be the first time that the court will address the question of what exactly constitutes an abuse of power – and in this case, whether a constitutional amendment intended solely to enable Deri to serve is valid.
Likud MK Danny Danon reportedly was the only MK who did not agree to sign the bill immediately, but he eventually signed as well.
The bill's text
The bill’s text, as revealed on Monday, says:
“There will not be judicial review by any level of court about any matter connected to, or resulting from, the appointment of a minister and his removal 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; 6c says that 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 voters’ wishes, and sometimes even bending the voters’ will to that of the government.”
The law therefore proposes to block the court from examining the “reasonableness” or any other aspect of a minister’s appointment, save for the qualifications written explicitly in the law.•