President Itzhak Herzog’s staff told Reshet Bet Radio on Thursday that if the negotiations being hosted at the presidential residence do not come to a conclusion soon, they would be forced to set a deadline for the talks.
Mind you, this is the same staff that talked the president into dropping several reasonable suggestions for a solution Herzog had accepted from prestigious left- and right-affiliated academics who collaborated for the sake of national unity, offering instead a disappointing, one-sided, anti-government proposal Herzog had the audacity to present as a compromise where “everybody wins.”
According to the report, the president’s patience will be exhausted in a few weeks, should the folks who call the legislation “judicial reform” and those who prefer “coup d’état” not reach a compromise.
Also on Thursday: one million right-wing voters are urged to show up in front of the Knesset to drive home the fact that the majority of Israelis want the judicial reform pretty much as it was presented by Justice Minister Yariv Levin back in the days when the only fault the anarchist left could point out in the government was appointing Avi Maoz.
According to Kan 11 News, the two sides have reached a compromise on the process of enacting constitutional legislation, known as Basic Laws. Justice Aharon Barak, leader of the judicial revolution in the early 1990s that empowered the Supreme Court over the other two branches of government, suggested there was no difference between a basic law and a regular law, other than the fact that the former had the words “basic Law” in the title. As it turned out, this cavalier attitude goes against the constitutional instincts of many Israelis on both sides of the aisle.
There’s a reason why parliamentary systems the world over insist that enacting or amending constitutional legislation should require a longer and more involved process than common legislation. While everyday laws may be used by the courts to establish precedence through their interpretation, constitutional laws block judicial interpretation, forcing the judges to obey them as they are or come up with astonishingly inventive ways to sidestep them.
And so, while Israeli voters have no problem recognizing the right of government to govern by whatever size majority it manages to put together, the same voters’ constitutional instinct suggests that basic laws should be harder to enact. The anti-reform protests are indeed being manipulated skillfully by a surprisingly small group of anarchists, but, at the same time, the average Israelis’ constitutional instinct is the reason they can be persuaded to come out to the streets.
The reported compromise requires a fourth plenum vote and a bigger majority to approve basic laws. In other words, the coalition, which presumably won the third plenum vote after the basic law had come out of committee, would have to gather additional support, this time from opposition parties, which would necessarily mean additional amendments.
Sounds too difficult? Consider this: Article V of the US Constitution provides two ways to propose amendments to the Constitution. 1. Amendments may be proposed either by Congress, through a joint resolution passed by a two-thirds vote, or, 2. By a convention called by Congress in response to applications from two-thirds of the state legislatures.
It makes the Israeli compromise look in comparison, what’s the legal term, easy-peasy?
Meanwhile, no progress has been reported on the makeup of the committee to elect judges. Justice Minister Yariv Levin insists it must be changed, the lawyers must be kept out, and the coalition should be granted an advantage in at least some of the judicial appointments. Levin told Reshet Bet Radio on Thursday morning that if the committee is not changed, he won’t convene it, effectively freezing new nominations to the Supreme Court. Considering the fact that Court President Esther Hayut is scheduled to retire in October, Yariv’s threat is extremely real.
By law, Hayut will be replaced by her deputy, Justice Uzi Vogelman. He announced earlier that he prefers not to succeed Justice Hayut, and the post was going to go to Justice Yitzhak Amit, but now it’s not clear if Vogelman is allowed to decline the job. In any event, if court appointments are frozen, the supremes would be down to 14 judges in October, and 13 in October 2024, when Vogelman retires.
Now, that’s how a senior politician should operate, and more power to Yariv Levin for using his power to fight the man (or woman, in this case). One question remains: if you’re this good at using your power, how come you succumbed to pressure and didn’t pass the first item of the judicial reform by the end of the winter session after it had come out of committee all shiny and bright and ready to be passed by a 64-vote majority?
The answer is as it has been since 1996 in Israel’s right-wing politics: Bibi. The fact is, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never wanted judicial reform, hardly mentioned it during his 2022 campaign, and did nothing to support Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Constitution Committee Chairman MK Simcha Rothman in their struggle against a hostile media, poisonous media, fifth-column police department, lawless trade union, crypto-fascistic subversives in all areas of Israeli public life, and even within the Likud party.
It was Bibi who killed the reform vote in late March, and it’s Bibi who will be cutting its oxygen in the months to come. If not for Bibi’s preconceived retreat, we wouldn’t have needed the negotiations, the reform would have been behind us, and whoever still wanted to demonstrate could demonstrate.
And this is the reason Levin has been urging right-winger to show up for the million-person march on the Knesset Thursday evening. He, and every last right-winger, know this rally is directed only at one person.
