Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Thursday wrote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the yardstick established by the Supreme Court in its ruling on the matter before us does not lead me to the conclusion that Deri’s appointment, on the judicial level, is extremely unreasonable.”
That’s some tacit approval, with extra tacit. But that should be enough for the Netanyahu government, which is expected to approve on Sunday the appointment of Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri as Interior Minister. Deri left the Interior Ministry after being accused and later convicted of bribery which he committed while in office. His return will likely arouse much controversy. Last week, Deri requested AG Weinstein’s opinion in advance of his appointment. On Thursday, Weinstein informed the Prime Minister that having examined the issue he sees no legal objection to the appointment.
But Weinstein made no bones regarding what he personally felt about the appointment: “The very appointment of Deri to the post of a minister generates judicial difficulties and has been defined by the Supreme Court as tittering on the borderline of what is reasonable.”
Two months ago, to avoid supporting a move his party objected to, Deri resigned from his post as Economy Minister to allow Netanyahu to assume the job and to issue an executive order bypassing the ministry’s regulator’s ruling on Israel’s natural gas deposits. The payoff for that move on Deri’s part was a promise to give him back the influential Interior Ministry from which he was forced to resign in disgrace some twenty years ago.
A month ago, Netanyahu announced that he intends to award the Interior portfolio, abandoned by Silvan Shalom (Likud) amid a sex scandal, to Shas, because the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party had not received enough “important portfolios.”
In 1993, Deri was charged with 2 bribery counts, three counts of fraud and breach of trust, fraud under aggravating circumstances, and falsifying corporate documents. Deri continued to serve as Interior Minister while the prosecution was preparing his case, from June until September 1993, until the Supreme Court ruled that he must resign. In 1999 Deri was finally convicted on most of the charges against him and was sentenced to four years in jail plus a $65,000 fine. The court’s ruling took 917 pages.
And so, another circle is complete in Israel’s politics, as a minister who was caught breaking the Seventh Commandment makes way for a minister who was caught breaking the Eighth.