The time and political investment in the government’s judicial reform plan do not distract it from national security and other key issues, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post this week.
The full interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be published in Friday’s Post, with video on JPost.com and audio in The Jerusalem Post Podcast.
“If you think that I haven’t done other things,” Netanyahu said, “well, we have quite a few [accomplishments] not only in the field of security but in the field of statesmanship, the field of economy, in many other fields. We’re active. The media just doesn’t pay attention to it, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t pay attention to it, and I think we’re progressing in important ways.”
“Some of them, I hope, will come to the surface very soon,” he added.
Netanyahu spoke shortly after the IDF raid in Jenin, in which the IDF killed five Palestinian terrorists and before Tuesday’s deadly attack in Eli, in which terrorists murdered four Israelis.
Netanyahu: Judicial reform is worth the effort
Though large and disruptive protests have roiled Israel in the months since the government’s formation, Netanyahu said he thinks the judicial reform is worth the effort but that his government “should take the lessons of the last few months” and proceed with a “measured” version of the changes.
“I think the majority of the public understands that there needs to be judicial reform,” the prime minister said. “I think there’s consensus that it has to be done in a more measured way, and that’s what we’re doing. I don’t think you can put aside judicial reform, I just think you should do it right.”
Doing it right, Netanyahu said, means to “proceed in a measured way, in a way that doesn’t move the pendulum from one side of complete judicial activism and complete control by the Supreme Court of the other branches of government to the other side, where you’d have the legislature and the executive of the government controlling the Supreme Court.”
On the matter of judges ruling on government decisions based on their perceived reasonableness, one of the practices the judicial reform seeks to curb, Netanyahu said: “Is it reasonable that judges could cancel decisions by the government not based on any law, but on something that any judge can arbitrarily decide is reasonable or unreasonable? That’s not reasonable.
“If you had a secret vote, a secret ballot in the Knesset, I’ll bet you 100 Knesset members out of 120 would agree with that,” Netanyahu added. “Politically, you know, people are constrained by all sorts of pressures.”
When it comes to the talks about judicial reform in the President’s Residence, Netanyahu accused the opposition of being unwilling to come to even a “minimal understanding.” “Rather than be stymied by that, I think we should just move in a more measured way,” he said.
The reform's effects on the economy
Credit ratings agency Moody’s kept Israel’s A1 rating but downgraded its outlook in April from “positive” to “stable,” saying the change “reflects a deterioration of Israel’s governance, as illustrated by the recent events around the government’s proposal for overhauling the country’s judiciary.”
Netanyahu, however, argued that the reform will bolster Israel’s economy.
“I think the Israeli economy is very strong,” he said. “Despite the turbulence and all the hype, the rating agencies maintained Israel’s positive rating, high rating.”
Netanyahu noted Intel’s announcement of the biggest investment in Israel’s history, $25 billion, to build a new manufacturing plant in the country. “You don’t do that in a weak economy,” he said. “I think overall the basics of the economy will ultimately speak and they do right now. I’m not impressed by the daily volatility of the stock market or the exchange rate. I look at the long term, and the long term is that I’ve led a free market revolution in Israel’s economy. It’s a very strong one; it’s a knowledge-based global economy; we’re moving into AI with full force – and that’s not hype either.”
A fifth of the world’s investments in artificial intelligence start-ups are in Israel, and Netanyahu expressed optimism that there will be more.
“I think Israel’s economy is strong, and it will stay strong. The judicial reform will not in any way hurt it. It will only support it,” he said.