Coalition to drive forward budget, judicial appointments bills in intense Knesset push
As the state budget March 31 deadline looms, justice minister aims to ram through key judicial overhaul reform, while Haredi MKs insist on a military service exemption law
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The coalition is gearing up for an intensive two weeks of legislative action as it seeks to pass the budget, approve far-reaching and controversial legislation to change Israel’s judicial appointments system, and even pass a highly contentious law to re-instate broad exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
If the coalition does not pass the budget by March 31, the Knesset will automatically be dissolved — by law — and new elections called, so priority will be given to the legislative necessities for approving the obligatory components of the budget bills.
But Justice Minister Yariv Levin is also anxious to approve the judicial appointments bill, with the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee ready to blast through tens of thousands of objections filed by the opposition against the measure next week, and even bring it to its final votes next Wednesday.
Meanwhile, elements within the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party have threatened to vote against the budget if a law allowing for mass exemptions from military service for Haredi yeshiva students is not passed first.
But opposition to such legislation within the Likud means that passing such a law, especially before the budget, would be almost impossible. It’s unclear, however, if there is a willingness within UTJ to go to elections at present.
This packed agenda, together with the coalition’s razor thin majority of just 61 MKs, has led the Likud party to issue an order to all members to be present for the entirety of all the Knesset’s working days next week to avoid what could be damaging delays to the legislative processes for these bills if the opposition succeeds in scoring any parliamentary tactical victories.
In addition, the government is also seeking to move forward with its effort to oust Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, although such a move will likely not be completed before the Knesset recess on April 2.
The opposition has filed several thousand objections to the state budget in the Knesset Finance Committee, and it will take several sessions of the committee, and likely all of next week for the coalition to vote them down.
That means that the budget bills could only be moved to the Knesset plenum the following week, where the thousands of objections will also need to be voted on before the legislation is brought for final approval in its back-to-back second and third readings.
Since time on the Knesset plenum floor will be limited, Levin is eager to have the judicial appointments bill brought to a vote by the end of next week so that it does not interfere with the timetable for passing the budget the following week.
The bill would increase political control over judicial appointments and significantly reduce the influence of the judges in the Judicial Selection Committee, which makes all judicial appointments, especially over appointments to the Supreme Court.
The opposition, along with the attorney general, three former Supreme Court presidents and other legal officials have said that the legislation would greatly politicize the judiciary and thereby undermine judicial independence.
Levin and the government argue, however, that the judiciary has too much control over judicial appointments and that giving politicians greater control would redress what they claim is an imbalanced reality in which the government has difficulty appointing judges it favors.
The Constitution Committee began voting on the unprecedented 71,023 objections the opposition filed to the bill on Wednesday, and has scheduled hearings next Monday and Tuesday to complete the voting process.
The coalition might then seek to bring the bill to its second and third readings in the Knesset plenum immediately on Wednesday. That would require approval in the Knesset House Committee, although that would likely be a formality.
It would still, nevertheless, require days of voting in the Knesset plenum to vote down the thousands of objections, which would eat into the floor time needed for the budget bills.
In such an eventuality, approval of the judicial appointments law might be pushed off to April 1 and 2, the last two days of the Knesset winter session after the budget deadline on March 31.
The ability to move forward with the ultra-Orthodox military exemptions law is likely to be constrained by the coalition’s need to pass the budget and Levin’s urgency in passing the judicial appointments law, not to mention opposition within the Likud.
The coalition would be hard-pressed to ensure that it could fully staff all the relevant Knesset committees with coalition MKs to approve all three bills in committee in the short timeframe before the Knesset recess.
Last week, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, the head of Agudath Yisrael, the Hassidic wing of UTJ, announced that three of the faction’s MKs would vote against the budget if an enlistment law is not passed.
The coalition only has 61 MKs at present after Otzma Yehudit quit over the ceasefire with Hamas, and it is unclear if that party will support the budget or not, although renegade Otzma MK Almog Cohen has voted several times with the coalition and against his party in recent months.
It is also unclear if Goldknopf would follow through on his threat not to support the budget due to uncertainty of whether the right-wing, ultra-Orthodox political alliance would win the subsequent election.
Beyond the parliamentary drama, the government is also seeking to fire Attorney General Baharav-Miara due to innumerable clashes between her and the current administration.
The cabinet will, however, only vote on a motion of no-confidence against her on March 23. The government would then need to file that motion of no-confidence to a statutory committee tasked with recommending whether or not the attorney general should be removed.
But that committee is yet to be fully staffed. The Knesset must appoint an MK to the panel, which is a simple process, but the government must select a former justice minister or attorney general to the committee as well.
It does not appear that any former attorneys general are willing to participate in an effort to remove Baharav-Miara from office. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is a former justice minister, but it appears unlikely that a serving government minister would be able to serve on the committee for firing the attorney general.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana is also a former justice minister, but there would likely be legal difficulties for him to serve on the statutory committee as well.
Even if the government were to find someone to fill this position, the committee must still deliberate on the government’s no-confidence motion, give Baharav-Miara a hearing and make its final recommendations — a sequence of events that would likely take several weeks at the very least.
