Lapid tells coalition: ‘If you still have any sense of fairness, stop’

Carrie Keller-Lynn is a former political and legal correspondent for The Times of Israel

Opposition leader Yair Lapid speaks during a Knesset debate ahead of a vote on the 'reasonableness' bill, July 23, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Opposition leader Yair Lapid speaks during a Knesset debate ahead of a vote on the 'reasonableness' bill, July 23, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says that 29 weeks of ongoing protest against the government’s broad plan to sap the judiciary of its power show the strength of Israel’s democratic spirit.

“Israel was born democratic and we have a democratic instinct,” Lapid says, addressing the Knesset floor.

He adds that the bill to cancel judicial oversight over the “reasonableness” of senior political decisions “wants to turn us into Poland and Hungary, but we are not them.”

Pointing to the tens of thousands of Israelis who marched on a major highway into Jerusalem on Saturday to protest today’s vote on the reasonableness bill, Lapid says that Israelis are unwilling to accept the government’s judicial overhaul, of which its reasonableness bill is only the first salvo.

“Three generations marched yesterday and sang ‘You landed on the wrong generation.'”

Alluding to opposition warnings that Israel may be on the brink of a civil war, inspired by longstanding social tensions stirred up by the judicial overhaul debate, Lapid says that: “We didn’t march yesterday to declare war, but to prevent one. To tell the government, if you still have any sense of fairness, stop.”

Lapid says that it is still possible to achieve a compromise, and said that if the coalition stops its unilateral push to change judicial power, he would return to talks hosted at the President’s Residence.

“If you stop [the advance of the legislation], we’re here [to negotiate]. We talked at the President’s Residence. The doors there are open, waiting for us all. Waiting for us to come back and talk to prevent a disaster. To prevent disintegration. To prevent an extreme minority from seizing control of the lives of the Israeli majority,” he says.

Addressing the cabinet directly, Lapid says: “We don’t want to defeat you on this, because then we all lose. The truth is everyone wants a compromise, but nobody knows how to reach one or what it’ll look like.”

“There’s only one way to find out: to keep trying. To stop the legislation. To go to the President’s Residence. Our legs will pray the whole way there. We need to go there and argue, fight, and speak again and again and not stop trying because Israel’s fate depends on it,” he adds.

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