High Court judges says law shielding Netanyahu ‘clearly’ legislated to benefit him

Supreme Court President Esther Hayut says “it is clear” a law passed in March blocking the court from ordering a prime minister to recuse himself from office was designed for the benefit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaking during a hearing on petitions to the High Court of Justice against the law, Hayut together with justices Uzi Vogelman and Isaac Amit all pointedly ask on several occasions whether delaying implementation of the legislation would resolve this problem, a form of legal interpretation the court deployed just three days ago over the so-called Tiberias law.

“[Likud] MK Moshe Saada said two days before the law was passed in its second and third readings ‘we legislated it because of Netanyahu.’ You can’t get clearer than that,” insists Hayut in the hearing.

“Perhaps there is an alternative [to striking down the law] that maybe the amendment to the law [for recusal] could apply only from the next Knesset,” queried Vogelman.

The recusal law was passed as an amendment to Basic Law: The Government, ostensibly to prevent the court or the attorney general from determining that Netanyahu was in violation of his conflict of interest agreement, signed in 2020 in light of his criminal indictments, due to his involvement in his coalition’s judicial overhaul legislation.

Vogelman also insists during the hearing that the High Court has the authority of judicial review over Basic Laws, despite them having a quasi-constitutional nature. These comments come against the background of recent remarks by several government ministers that the court has no right to review or invalidate such laws.