Lawmakers break with coalition on MK suspension bill
Rachel Azaria and Uri Maklev slam ‘extreme’ legislation; Benny Begin urges larger majority to kick off process, but calls for impeachment
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Three members of the governing coalition joined opposition legislators on the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Tuesday to lambaste a controversial bill aimed at allowing MKs to suspend their colleagues.
Likud MK Benny Begin, Kulanu MK Rachel Azaria and United Torah Judaism MK Uri Maklev all attacked the current version of the bill, with the former urging impeachment rather than suspension, but requiring a larger majority to levy the punishment.
The bill aims to allow 90 MKs to vote to suspend a fellow lawmaker for “inappropriate behavior” — negating the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; inciting to racism; or supporting armed struggle by a hostile state or a terrorist organization against the State of Israel.
Despite a boycott by opposition MKs on the grounds that there had been insufficient debate, the Knesset Law Committee voted at the end of a stormy debate on February 29 to send the legislation for a first reading in the Knesset plenum.
That first reading passed in late March and was sent back to the committee ahead of being submitted for its second and third readings.
Citing “fundamental difficulties” with the draft bill, Begin on Tuesday called on the Law Committee to raise the bar needed to set the suspension process in motion.
Begin proposed that at least 70 signatures be required to kick-start the process, instead of the currently proposed simple majority of 61, with a minimum of 10 of those signatures belonging to members of the opposition. He also called for the Knesset vote to be by secret ballot.
While trying to make it harder for suspensions to succeed, though, he also called for the bill to enable the impeachment of MKs, rather than just their suspension.
Maklev characterized the bill as a wrongheaded response to an incident earlier in the year in which three Arab MKs attended a moment of silence held for Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis. The three Joint (Arab) List lawmakers were suspended on February 8 by the Knesset Ethics Committee, Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas for four months and Jamal Zahalka for two.
“There are some things that should just be within the framework of the [Knesset’s] Ethics Committee. This bill was born out of an emotional response by the prime minister. Suspending an MK doesn’t achieve anything… this bill does damage to the Knesset and to the state,” he said.
Azaria said that in its current form, the legislation would likely “strengthen the extremists.”
“In order for us to strengthen the moderates, we need this draft law to be far more moderate and for the chance of its being used to be small. Today, the bill is very extreme and even deranged,” she said.
She suggested that any suspension request by MKs be passed through the Ethics Committee rather than the Knesset House Committee, because meetings of the latter are recorded on film which would encourage members to play to the cameras.
Azaria, like Begin, recommended a “dramatic increase” in the number of lawmakers needed to start the suspension process and said that the process should not be open to the public.
All of the opposition members in the Knesset committee Tuesday objected to the bill, but a vote by the seven coalition members and six opposition members in the committee has not yet been scheduled.
The suspension bill, backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been roundly criticized since being proposed in February.
President Reuven Rivlin said earlier this year the bill reflected “a problematic understanding of parliamentary democracy” and that the correct address for MKs who had committed or were suspected of committing crimes was the attorney general, not fellow lawmakers.
Knesset legal advisers weighed in too, warning that such legislation could do “real harm to the ability of an MK to function,” possibly on repeated occasions, and was likely to cause “a nuisance, investment of resources and the interruption of parliamentary activity.”
