The meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue&White Chairman and Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz ended Monday morning without a final unity government agreement.
The two leaders met at the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street in an attempt to advance coalition negotiations and form a government, but according to a Likud official speaking to Reshet Bet radio, the remaining disagreement is over the makeup of the Judicial Appointments Committee in its capacity of selecting new Supreme Court judges.
Netanyahu has been urged by his coalition partners on the right, the Yamina party, not to squander the victories won by former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in encouraging more conservative justices into a notoriously activist High Court of Justice (the Supreme Court in its more political capacity).
Blue&White announced on Monday morning that the “Netanyahu’s Laws” will be submitted to the Knesset at the next plenum session, with the approval of Knesset Speaker Benny Gantz. These include an amendment to the Basic Law: Government, which bans a person facing criminal indictments from serving as prime minister and/or attempting to establish a coalition government. Another bill will set a 2-consecutive terms limit on the post of prime minister.
Needless to say, both bills are seriously anti-democratic, but a la guerre com a la guerre. Blue&White has been holding the threat of these legislations over Netanyahu’s head, and until this morning it appeared to be working. Now it might be time to poke the PM with a bigger taser.
Several MKs have told Reshet Bet that much harsher bills are being discussed to cattle prod Netanyahu to the path of submission, including a gem that would ban anyone under criminal indictment from running to the Knesset at all.
That one is not just a tiny amendment to the Basic Law: The Government, it’s an amendment to the Basic Law: The Knesset, and it’s intended to incentivize Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Health Minister Ya’akov Litzman, both of whom could be asked to go work for a living should the bill pass.
And it can be passed in one day, if Speaker Gantz and the Chairman of the Regulations Committee Avi Nissenkorn, from Gantz’s party, say so.
Of course, Blue&White and the rest of the anyone-but-Bibi opposition are ready to tell the High Court that this is not a personal legislation, tailored to fit one specific target. After all, nowhere in the proposed amendments does it say “Bibi.” The legislator merely imagines a hypothetical situation where an anonymous prime minister face three criminal indictments for receiving champagne and cigars from his millionaire friends.
And so, on Tuesday, when the Regulations Committee is convened by MK Avi Nissenkorn, it will most likely grant the Bibi bill an exemption that would shoot it up past the normal process and allow the plenum to vote on it immediately.
This is the gun which is currently pressed against Netanyahu’s head, and it’s up to the Likud chairman to decide whether, in the words of the immortal Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, “Shoot me now or later.”