The High Court orders that a vote be called on Wednesday to remove the outgoing Knesset president. Netanyahu is cast in power despite the opposition adding more votes.
In a decision that crosses the borders of the separation of powers, the Supreme Court of Israel on Monday gave an ultimatum to the president of the Knesset (Parliament), Yuli Edelstein, to convene on Wednesday a plenary session in which the center-left parties They intend to replace him with one of his deputies. Edelstein - one of the barons of the Likud party led by Benjamin Netanyahu - last week suspended the activity of the Chamberunder the restrictions of public meetings dictated by the Government to contain the spread of the coronavirus. After the deadline on Monday night, the President of Parliament announced that he would not follow the recommendation of the judges, but the Supreme Court issued a binding resolution shortly afterwards to order him to convene the session. Despite opposition forces adding a tight majority of 61 of the Knesset's 120 seats after the elections on 2 June , the conservative prime minister is holding on to power amid the health emergency triggered by the pandemic.
In Israel there is already talk of a coup against democracy. The writer Yuval Noah Harari, globally famous for his work Sapiens , abandoned his estrangement from domestic politics this weekend to blame Netanyahu for “a coup attempt to try to prevent a newly elected Parliament from supervising the performance of a prime minister in functions ”. From a forceful tribune published in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaperHarari warned: "As long as the Knesset remains closed, we will be living in a dictatorship." Hundreds of citizens have demonstrated with black flags since Thursday against the so-called "coup against democracy". More than 600,000 people also participated in a virtual protest through social networks
Civil society groups, such as the NGO Movement for the Quality of Democracy, and the centrist Blue and White alliance, led by Benny Gantz,who has been commissioned to form a government, on Sunday urged the Supreme Court to rule on the paralysis of parliamentary life. The five-judge chamber headed by the High Court president, Esther Hayut, did not communicate its decision until the following noon, after a hearing in which, among others, the Knesset president and Israel's attorney general appeared. The Supreme Court asked that the plenary session that should relieve him be convened for this Wednesday, and warned him that, if he did not ratify that he was going to abide by the resolution before 21:00 on Monday (20:00 Spanish peninsular time), he would be ordered in a strict manner, as it has finally happened.
The Knesset president argued that the courts should not interfere with the organization of the House's work or organize its agenda. "With all due respect, I cannot accept an ultimatum being issued to the President of Parliament in the exercise of his duties," he argued. "Interference is necessary in this case," the Supreme Court justices replied in their final resolution, "so that the foundations of our parliamentary model and the essence of the democratic system are not compromised."
To suspend the sessions, Edelstein invoked last week invoked the rules approved by the Government to prevent contagion by coronavirus, which vetoed the meetings of more than 10 people, and that a telematic voting system had not been enabled in Parliament. Avichai Mandelblit, the attorney general who formally charged Netanyahu in three corruption cases involving bribery, fraud and abuse of power, claimed before the Supreme that Edelstein had overstepped his powers by ignoring the will of the majority in Parliament and suspending the parliamentary activity.
"Israel's democracy must never be hijacked by political negotiations," warned former general Gantz, who will hardly succeed in integrating all opposition forces against Netanyahu into a government coalition, from the right-wing layman Avigdor Lieberman to the listed Arab parties. Joint. Several ministers of the current acting Cabinet attacked the Supreme Court's decision. Yariv Levin, head of Tourism and right arm of the Likud leader, said that the court had "seized the Knesset", while the far-right Bezalel Smotrich, head of Transport, accused the judiciary of "promoting a coup." All the deputies of the conservative arch boycotted Monday's sessions.
The paralysis of the Knesset has prevented, for example, the parliamentary endorsement of mobile tracking by the Shin Bet (internal espionage)to monitor the movements of people infected with the coronavirus. The Netanyahu government approved in the early hours of last Tuesday a decree for the security agency to monitor, without judicial authorization, the patients with the Covid-19. Hundreds of people have received text messages on their phones informing them that they have been close to an infected person and that they must be quarantined. The Israeli Civil Rights Association NGO has described the decision as a “dangerous precedent”, and the Institute for Democracy analysis center questions the use of the Shin Bet, which focuses its action on security, in a health emergency.
While Montesquieu's theory of separation of powers is questioned in Israel and reports of a coup attempt grow, the country's president, Reuven Rivlin, has warned the Speaker of the House that the parliamentary paralysis "undermines democracy ”In the midst of a health emergency. “A Knesset out of the game damages the State's ability to cope with an emergency situation. We must not allow this crisis, no matter how serious it is, to cause damage to our democratic system, "stressed the president. Until Monday, the blockade has prevented the establishment of a special commission to deal with the expansion of Covid-19, while citizens are already in a situation of confinement.
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