High Ct. upholds Netanyahu dismissal of Gallant, sees no place for judicial intervention
In unanimous ruling, justices say PM has broad discretion over firing ministers, and political considerations can be legitimate cause for dismissal
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The High Court of Justice ruled unanimously on Thursday against several petitions asking it to overturn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, saying there was no justification for court intervention.
The court noted that the timing raised “special wonderment” given that Israel is in the midst of a war and that the defense minister has played a central role in managing that conflict. But it ruled that the prime minister’s broad powers over staffing his government, along with what it said were the reasonable considerations behind the decision, meant there was no place for the court to reverse the decision.
Gallant’s dismissal took formal effect on Thursday evening, 48 hours after Netanyahu handed him a brief letter of dismissal.
The petitions were filed on Wednesday, the morning after Netanyahu fired Gallant, by several government watchdog groups, and argued that the decision to fire the defense minister amid a severe and ongoing war was made using non-pertinent and political considerations, and was unreasonable in the extreme.
Announcing that he was dismissing Gallant on Tuesday night, Netanyahu said that trust between him and Gallant had broken down in recent months, that significant gaps had opened up between the two, and that this prevented the proper management of the war.
The petitioners, and numerous other critics including the opposition, accused Netanyahu, however, of ousting Gallant for political considerations, including owing to the latter’s refusal to agree to legislation that would reinstitute blanket exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service.
The dispute has caused Netanyahu a severe political headache, with the ultra-Orthodox political parties threatening to undermine the stability of the coalition if their demands regarding such exemptions are not met.
In her written opinion, however, Justice Yael Wilner said that the court ruled that the discretion of the prime minister in hiring and firing ministers is “very broad” and can include a variety of considerations.
“The starting point for a judicial review in a [situation] such as this is the broad discretion of the prime minister, within which he may use a wide variety of considerations, including political considerations, with even the stability of the government being a relevant consideration for this matter,” Wilner wrote.
“This means, the scope of judicial review of decisions of this type is limited,” she continued, stating explicitly that even if Netanyahu’s reasons for firing Gallant included political considerations, “this would not warrant, by itself, judicial intervention in the decision.”
She added that Netanyahu’s stated reason for firing Gallant, a breakdown of trust between him and the defense minister, and the significant difference of agreement the two had over key security and policy issues, were reasonable and further buttressed the conclusion that there were no grounds for judicial intervention.
Wilner did write, however, that the decision to fire Gallant “raises unique wonderment regarding the timing of the decision to remove the minister from his position in the middle of an ongoing war,” since “the defense minister naturally has an important and central role in managing this was which has gone on for over a year.”
She concluded, nonetheless, that the petitioners did not demonstrate that the decision to fire Gallant rose to the level of being unreasonable in the extreme, and so dismissed the petition.
Justices Yosef Elron and Ruth Ronen concurred with Wilner’s ruling.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the petitioning organizations, said that the court had “missed an historic opportunity to defend the security of the country from narrow, political considerations.”
Added the organization, “The court chose to focus on the formal authority of the prime minister to fire ministers, while ignoring the serious consequences of the decision on the security of the state in times of war, and the fact that the dismissals were intended to advance the draft evasion law in violation of the ruling of the High Court and the orders of the attorney general.”
