On Mandate’s Final Day, Lapid Government Held Back by Shaked’s Judicial Appointments Ultimatum | The Jewish Press – JewishPress.com | David Israel | 22 Sivan 5781 – June 2, 2021

Photo credit: Miriam Alster and Olivier Fitoussi / Flash90

Meirav Michaeli (work) vs. Ayelet Shaked (Ymina).

A senior source on the “Bloc of Change” told Ma’ariv on Wednesday morning that “progress had been made during the night in most areas, with the exception of Ayelet Shaked’s insistence on a seat on the judicial appointments committee.” The source emphasized that “now it depends on Bennett and Shaked, everything else is done.” Yesh Atid refuses to give in to Shaked’s demand, claiming that two Ministers-designate will serve on the Judicial Appointments Committee – Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar (right) and Transport Minister Merav Michaeli (left). Talks are expected to continue in the hopes of briefing President Reuven Rivlin of the new administration before 11am.

Shaked can ask a lot when you consider that her party Yamina, which has only six seats in the Knesset (a seventh went beyond joining the left), will also have the prime ministerial job for the next two years as a multiple ministerial Departments. However, this is not an excuse on the part of the Yamina leader to sabotage the left-right government at the last minute, as some leftists have suggested. At stake is Shaked’s life’s work of taming the activists’ Supreme Court by appointing conservative judges, an endeavor that she began as Justice Minister in Netanyahu’s government.

The new administration’s tenure, should it serve its full four years, coincides with the retirement of six Supreme Court justices at the mandatory age of 70. There are a total of 15 judges, three of whom are considered conservative and the rest are represented in different shades of activism. This activist court has argued with the right-wing Knesset over constitutional laws that many say are outside of their jurisdiction. This is also the court that, in its capacity as the High Court of Justice, has admitted ludicrous Arab claims against small parts of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria by ordering demolitions and evictions in those settlements via splinters of partially owned land.

With six new, conservative judges who would respect the equality of the three branches of government, a more sensible political reality would be possible. But not when the Judge Appointments Committee is weighed to the left by the Chair of Labor Michaelmas.

The Judicial Appointment Committee consists of the President of the Supreme Court and two judges; two representatives of the bar association; two government ministers; and two MKs, traditionally one from the left and one from the right. To achieve her victory in appointing moderate judges to Justice Minister in 2015, Shaked struck a deal with then Bar Association Chair Effi Naveh, defying the will of then Supreme Court President Miriam Naor. Naveh has since been punished with an embarrassing scandal and lost his presidency.

The current breakdown of the correctional committee is in favor of the activists from 5 to 4 at best. Shaked wants to reverse this by replacing a left voice – Michaelmas.

Meanwhile, according to the Israeli media, an area of ​​the law has been overturned by Lapid’s experienced negotiators in favor of the lawbreakers: The Kaminitz Act, which made it easier for police to enforce the illegal building law, is being repealed or frozen. and some illegal Bedouin settlements in the Negev, located in large tracts of land outside the recognized Bedouin domains, will be given formal legal status, complete with infrastructure services. The winner here is Mansur Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am party.

As a gift to Ra’am, the new left-right government will probably remove support for LGBTQ from its basic agenda because the Islamist party is against it. Must respect Islam …

New Hope chairman Gideon Sa’ar is another “stumbling block” on the path of the new left-right coalition government: Sa’ar is the next Justice Minister determined to reform the role of the Attorney General, whose Hebrew title is merely the government legal advisor. The AG’s job was schizophrenic from the start, both as a lawyer advising the Prime Minister on the legality of new laws and as head of the state law enforcement apparatus. It’s definition of holding both ends of the stick.

By dividing the role, Israel would have a real attorney general overseeing the work of all of its law enforcement agencies and a government legal advisor who could occasionally take a position against that of the AG – something that is understandably impossible in the current context of the job.

One last heartwarming news: Labor MK Gilad Kariv is calling for the post of Diaspora Minister, for which he sees himself as the natural candidate. Kariv is the Executive Director of the Israeli Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism and plans, among other things, to set up a new “Department for Renewed Judaism” in the Diaspora Ministry, which is a code for Reform Judaism. That will have less to do with worrying about reform in the diaspora – I hear they are mostly quite good – but with pouring billions of shekels into the reform temples in Israel. Finally financially free, finally free.

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