Knesset’s summer session ends but parliamentary activity continues
Despite three-month recess, Knesset committees will still convene and the government is expected to push for passage of a Shas-backed bill on funding religious councils
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
After several days of frenzied activity, the Knesset quietly ended its summer session on Sunday, with lawmakers hurriedly passing three bills during a sparsely attended morning plenum session prior to the beginning of their three-month parliamentary recess.
Over the course of the past week, members of the Knesset rushed to advance as many bills as possible before the beginning of the break, touching on issues ranging from so-called kosher cellphones to who has the authority to enforce building regulations and how the state ombudsman for judges is chosen.
However, on Saturday evening, as MKs prepared for another day of back-to-back votes, coalition whip Ofir Katz of Likud announced that all nonessential bills would be removed from the Knesset agenda in the wake of a rocket attack that killed 12 children in the northern Druze town of Majdal Shams.
“Following Hezbollah’s shocking massacre of the children of Majdal Shams, it was decided that only urgent government bills will be on the Knesset’s agenda tomorrow. Our hearts are with the residents and the entire Druze community,” Katz explained.
According to the public broadcaster Kan, one of the bills dropped from the agenda is a controversial Shas-backed proposal that seeks to grant the religious services minister the power to allocate additional funds to local religious councils around the country. Voting on the bill was already postponed more than once due to coalition infighting.
The coalition intends to try to pass the bill during the recess by calling a special session, the report said.
Following the rocket attack, Yair Golan, head of the Labor-Meretz union The Democrats, said the Knesset recess must be canceled.
“It’s inconceivable that tomorrow, a day of near-war in the north, of unimaginable burials, of war in Gaza, 115 hostages in Hamas’s hands, tens of thousands of displaced in the north and south, the Knesset will simply go on vacation,” he declared.
Opposition parties, along with relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, have objected to the Knesset’s three-month recess, slated to begin on Monday and to run until October 27.
However, while regular plenum sessions will not be held during the break unless convened at the initiative of the government, much of the day-to-day parliamentary activity of the Knesset is set to continue.
At a Knesset House Committee meeting on July 2, lawmakers decided that parliamentary committees will be allowed to hold up to seven meetings during the break, while the Education, Culture and Sports Committee will be allowed to hold up to eight meetings ahead of the opening of the new school year on September 1.
The number of discussions in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will not be limited given the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel that killed 1,200 and saw 251 taken hostage.
The committee is currently debating an ultra-Orthodox draft law that Haredi lawmakers see as their only chance of heading off full-scale mobilization of yeshiva students.
On Monday, the first day of the recess, the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee, Education, Culture and Sports Committee, and Health Committee will all meet. Also on Monday, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is set to hold a joint hearing with the State Control Committee to discuss the protection and rehabilitation of the north.
