NOS News•
In Israel, a law has been passed that makes it a lot more difficult to declare a sitting prime minister unfit. The law is an important step for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is embroiled in a long-running corruption trial.
Under the new law, a prime minister can only be removed from office if he or she is physically or mentally unable to perform that function. That decision must then be approved by 75 percent of the ministers. If a prime minister still refuses to leave, at least 75 percent of the entire parliament must agree to force a departure. The Supreme Court has now been completely sidelined in this decision.
Conflict of interest
The new law is important in the discussion of Netanyahu’s role in the government’s legal reform plans. These plans should result in the Supreme Court being given less power in favor of parliament. Part of this is, for example, that parliament will be given more power in appointing judges.
According to the attorney general, Netanyahu should not interfere with those reforms at all, because he himself is on trial for corruption. And that conflict of interest would therefore make him unsuitable.
But thanks to the new law, the corruption case is no longer an obstacle for Netanyahu to get involved in the legal reforms. Moreover, it also protects him from possible future legal problems that come out of the corruption process.
The prime minister has, as it were, created his own Teflon layer with the new law. The opposition is furious, calling it a corrupt law ‘tailor-made’ for the prime minister.
The law was passed on the day when tens of thousands of Israelis again took to the streets to demonstrate against the reform plans. There have been weekly demonstrations throughout the country for about three months. Critics fear that Israel is in danger of turning into a dictatorship and are concerned about the rights of minorities.
There are also international concerns about the course of the Israeli government. Both European leaders and the United States have expressed concern about the reform plans. They emphasize that the shared democratic values are important for the relationship with Israel. Yet both domestic protests and foreign criticism seem to have little effect on Netanyahu’s government.
There are also concerns about Israel’s settlement policy. Earlier, the government announced that it wants to expand the existing settlements by about 10,000 homes. And this week, Israel announced that settlers would be allowed to resettle in four settlements in the West Bank from which Israel had previously withdrawn. This to the frustration of the United States. The country called the Israeli ambassador to the mat, because the settlements stand in the way of a two-state solution with a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank.
The announcement about the settlements comes at an inconvenient time. Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been rising for some time. With the start of Ramadan and the Jewish Pesach next week, those tensions are expected to rise even further.
Internationally, there is therefore a call for calm and de-escalation. But the Israeli government does not appear to be acting appeasingly. Both domestic protests and foreign criticism seem to have little effect on government policy.
