Minister of Education and Chairman of the Bayit Yehudi Party, Naftali Bennet and his partner Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked presented Thursday the “constitutional plan” which is supposed to complete the constitution in Israel and to balance the three authorities, especially the Supreme Court.
The main points of the plan were formulated following the recent rulings of the Supreme Court justices who, according to the Bayit Yehudi ministers, violated the status quo between the Knesset and the courts.
As an example, they note that about a month ago, the court ruled that it had the power to disqualify legislation approved by the Knesset only because of the quality of the discussion. Later, another ruling that questioned the Knesset’s work was stopped. In both examples, Bennett and Shaked intended the third apartment tax law and the ban on infiltrators. Another example related to the ruling given in the two-year budget, in which the judges decided to disqualify, in an unprecedented manner, a clause in the Basic Law.
Minister Bennett referred to the plan and said that “Recently, the High Court of Justice has invalidated Knesset laws and government decisions such as the outline for the removal of infiltrators, the budget law and the revocation of Hamas residency permits.” This new situation in which the repeal of laws has become routine will force us, the legislators elected by the public, to act to restore the proper balance between the authorities and that we are doing today.”
He also calls on Hamas to full recognize the State of Israel but if Hamas sits at the negotiating table alongside them, it cannot ignore the existence of the Jewish state and certainly not boycott its existence”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
About time!
Gear up for the liberals to fight to their death on this, as the court his their traditional hammer.
With a solid majority it would be very easy for the Kenesset to make the Israeli equivalent of a constitutional amendment. One possibility would be to change how judges are appointed (the current system allows judges a major role in choosing new judges, resulting in a judiciary reflecting the Israeli elite of the 1950s – ultra-secular, almost all Ashkenazi, all socialist). Another possibility is to establish a new “Supreme Court”, allowing the current one to go back to being a “High Court” (trying important cases themselves, and hearing appeals from lower courts) — the current system was established by the British, but after 1948 the “High Court” was allowed to replace the “Privy Council” as the supreme court, while continuing to be a court for intermediate appeals and major trials. A third option would be a basic law switching to the British system of “parliamentary supremacy” rather than the American system of which is based on separation of powers (which doesn’t exist in Israel since they have a parliamentary system to begin with).