Lapid: Overhaul talks only if legislation frozen until 2025

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid is demanding a year-and-a-half freeze on legislation aimed at making changes to the judiciary as a condition for his Yesh Atid party returning to negotiations with the coalition on judicial reforms.

Lapid, speaking from the Knesset rostrum on the parliament’s last day before summer recess, says that this freeze must be legislated into law.

Yesh Atid sources say this demand is in line with the type of guarantee Lapid unsuccessfully sought from Likud, amid frenzied attempts to compromise ahead of the coalition passing its first law of the judicial overhaul program last Monday.

“As long as there is no legislative freeze, there is no point and no sense to talk about other laws or agreements, because it is quite clear that the government will run away again at the last minute,” Lapid says to the Knesset.

The opposition leader says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready to compromise last week, but instead capitulated to pressure from Justice Minister Yariv Levin and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

“On Monday, both the president and I thought there was an agreement ready for signing. But then Yariv Levin and Ben Gvir knocked on the table and threatened to dissolve the government. The prime minister panicked, surrendered to them, and the ‘reasonableness’ law was passed in the most extreme formatpossible,” Lapid charges.

Shortly after the law to outlaw judicial review over the “reasonableness” of cabinet or ministerial decisions passed on Monday, Netanyahu made a fresh offer for compromise talks up to November, a month after the Knesset returns from recess.