Pared-down Knesset convenes in conference room for wartime session amid Iran strikes
In front of mostly empty seats, lawmakers table ‘nonessential’ discussions as plenum only debates legislation seen as urgent or important to war
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"
In its first session since the opening of hostilities with Iran, the Knesset convened on Monday in a sunken conference room in the parliament building in Jerusalem rather than in its usual chambers. Lawmakers debated a scaled-back legislative agenda in a sparsely attended meeting in a largely empty room.
Opening the session, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana praised Israelis for their “extraordinary national resilience” in working to ensure their country’s existence, “for generations to come.”
While other opposition motions of no-confidence were dropped from the agenda following Friday’s attack on Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory missile strikes, the Arab Hadash-Ta’al faction submitted a motion “in light of the wars in Iran and Gaza, and the heavy loss among civilians.”
Faction chairman MK Ayman Odeh called for an end to the fighting, arguing that “not only has this criminal government failed, the opposition is also being dragged along with it time and time again, in a quiet and shameful surrender.”
After the motion was voted down, Ohana said lawmakers “sent a strong message to our enemy: We are one people, and in such fateful moments we all stand together.”
The centrist National Unity party announced on Saturday evening that it had removed a regular motion of no-confidence in the government from Monday’s Knesset agenda, saying that Israel had entered a “critical” period and that “it is appropriate to act responsibly.”
During the session, National Unity MK Orit Farkash Hacohen slammed the coalition after it scheduled a meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee for Wednesday to discuss the budgets of local religious councils in the middle of a war.
“There are no words to describe this coalition,” she tweeted, noting that committee chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) had canceled other scheduled discussions this week “because of the war.”
“The discussion on compensation for the general public due to the war will wait until next week,” she complained.
In response, Gafni’s office said that “due to the security situation, the committee’s agenda has been postponed in its entirety” and that “the first item on the agenda for next week is the outline of compensation within the framework of property tax following the fighting.”
The issue of religious councils is being discussed “not out of desire but out of necessity” because the budgets are set to expire, leaving local authorities to absorb the costs, Gafni’s office said.
On Sunday, Speaker Ohana decided that this week, no “nonessential” discussions would be held in Knesset committees.
The Democrats party MK Naama Lazimi reached out to Ohana to protest the decision, complaining that the Knesset Finance Committee must be convened, as it “deals with, among other things, property taxes, compensation for businesses, war costs, and more.
“We received a notice that the Finance Committee’s discussions are canceled for the coming week,” she wrote Sunday in a letter signed by other opposition members of the panel as well. “We’ve never had a coalition so disconnected from the people.”
Also during Monday’s plenum, the government officially announced former housing minister Yitzhak Goldknopf’s exit from the government and his temporary replacement by Tourism Minister Haim Katz.
Katz is set to replace Goldknopf as housing minister for an interim period of three months.
Goldknopf, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, resigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet on Thursday afternoon as part of an ongoing fight over the military conscription of yeshiva students. His resignation went into effect on Sunday.
Also on Monday, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved regulations to allow the rabbinical courts to reduce the scale of their activity during the current state of emergency.
“The regulations allow the religious services minister to declare a state of emergency in the rabbinical courts, similar to the authority granted to the justice minister in the regulations regarding the courts, according to which only urgent and not routine hearings are currently held,” the committee said in a statement.
According to Rabbi Seth Farber, whose Itim nonprofit helps Israelis deal with religious bureaucracy, urgent matters could include divorce and remarriage cases in which there is time pressure or the need to prove a person’s Jewish status ahead of a pending wedding. Cases of agunot, women whose husbands refuse to grant them religious divorces, would also be considered urgent.
Separately, following a confidential briefing on the state of the war with Iran, lawmakers in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee voted unanimously to approve the nationwide state of emergency declared by Defense Minister Israel Katz and extended until the end of the month by the cabinet on Sunday.
Members of the committee were briefed by representatives of the National Security Council, Military Intelligence and the IDF Operations Directorate. On Tuesday, the committee will hold another confidential session with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
Due to the ongoing conflict with Iran, the Knesset took steps to minimize the number of people present by switching non-essential employees to remote work, canceling tours, calling on lawmakers not to bring their full staff and the number of reporters per news outlet permitted to enter was capped at two.
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