Ayelet get your gun

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Supreme Court Chief Justice Miriam Naor are on a collision course, and for the first time in weeks the weekend Hebrew-language papers have something else to chew on besides reading the US electoral tea leaves.

In a fiery letter to Shaked on Thursday, Naor charged that the minister’s proposed bill to reform the nomination process for judges amounted to placing a “gun on the table” in ongoing negotiations between the two. The bill, lodged by three Yisrael Beytenu MKs and informally advanced by the justice minister, would require a mere five-four majority on the nine-member Judicial Selection Committee to appoint a judge, including new Supreme Court justices. Current law stipulates that seven votes are required to confirm the appointment, a fact that gives the three Supreme Court justices on the committee a de facto veto over appointments of new justices.

The issue is coming to a head because four of the court’s 15 justices will reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 in the coming months, freeing up nearly a third of the court’s seats.

“Submitting this bill at the current time, under the circumstances, [is like] ‘placing a gun on the table,’” Naor wrote. “It means that if some of the committee members do not agree to appoint certain candidates, preventing the appointments using [the requirement for] a special majority, then the constitutional ‘rules of the game’ will be changed, such that they can be appointed with a regular majority by the committee members.”

Haaretz dedicates a nearly full-page report to the ongoing altercation between the two officials that plays off of Naor’s gun analogy. It cites Anton Chekhov’s famous dramatic principle that if in the first chapter of a play there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it “absolutely must go off.” In other words, Haaretz implies, if Shaked doesn’t back down on her demands, a high-stakes clash between her and the chief justice president is inevitable, and may result in a severe rift between the branches of government.

Haaretz predictably takes Naor’s side of the argument, but some of the daily’s analysts notably call out the chief justice for “playing into the hands” of the justice minister, and criticize her for what they called a lapse of the sort of self-restraint expected from a public figure in her position.

“What went on in the mind of the chief justice, an elderly woman, poised, experienced, and possessing a perfectly balanced judicial temperament, that made her express herself in such an agitated way against the justice minister?” wonders political columnist Yossi Verter.

“The [bill] was stillborn…. It has no majority in the Knesset,” Verter explains. It must clear countless hurdles before it can be seen as a threat to the current level of independence enjoyed by the Supreme Court. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long upheld the court’s authority in such disputes, is highly unlikely to back the legislation, Verter points out, nor is he, or other coalition members, particularly interested in handing Shaked, a political rival, such a significant victory on the Knesset floor.

In Yedioth Ahronoth, the criticism of Naor is even more pronounced. “The letter sent by [Naor], usually [known for her] gentle personality, to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked bears witness to an early and exaggerated hysteria,” writes contributor Tova Zimuki. “The two [officials], who are usually on excellent terms, have been negotiating for months about the four positions to be filled on the High Court. In the end, they will compromise, simply because they do not have the privilege of delaying the appointments.”

Shaked has said she plans to publish on Sunday a list of more than 20 candidates for the four slots.

The right-wing daily Israel Hayom is the country’s only major Hebrew-language newspaper that avoids the Shaked-Naor affair, despite the fact that the issue has long been a favorite topic for the Israeli right. Instead, the Republican-backing, Clinton-bashing, Sheldon Adelson-owned paper proudly leads with a report on an ABC poll that, for the first time in months, indicates Donald Trump may have a slight lead over his Democratic rival. In an unmistakably hopeful tone, the paper explains that Trump’s poll numbers are rising in some swing states like Nevada and Florida.

“Trump is close to turning the tables,” writes analyst Boaz Bismuth, who, though typically sympathetic to the Republican party nominee, has been careful in recent weeks not to predict any results. “Clinton, on the other hand, will have to work hard for her win.”

In a divisive race that has turned the bickering over Israel’s Supreme Court appointments into a welcome distraction, one might be forgiven for feeling grateful that, for better or worse, the results of that two-year contest will be known soon enough.