Likud aims to pass bills on direct elections, death penalty, outposts

The Likud will expedite a series of bills supported by the Right on Tuesday and Wednesday, before Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is expected to be given the mandate to form a government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expires on Tuesday at midnight.

The sweeping legislation, if given final approval, would change the nature of Israel’s legal and electoral system as well as expand its footprint in Area C of the West Bank.

The bills include legislation that would initiate direct elections for prime minister, cancel the 2005 Gaza Strip withdrawal, institute the death penalty for terrorists, prevent the entrance of migrant workers, add more judges to and enable the bypassing of the Supreme Court, legalize unauthorized West Bank outposts and cancel Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s rotation with Netanyahu as prime minister.

As a first step in the process, the Knesset Arrangements Committee currently headed by Likud Faction chairman Miki Zohar is set to meet at 5:30 p.m. this afternoon to vote on fast-tracking the legislation.

The committee vote must happen immediately because the Likud’s control of it is linked to Netanyahu’s possession of a mandate to form a government.

Netanyahu, however, is not expected to meet the midnight deadline for creating a 61-member coalition.

If President Reuven Rivlin hands the mandate over to Lapid, something that could happen as early as Wednesday night, chairmanship of the Arrangements Committee will shift to Yesh Atid MK Karin Elharar.

Before that happens, Zohar wants to advance key legislation, which could be brought to the plenum as early as Wednesday. Most of these bills have majority support.

When it comes to votes, the right-wing parties, including those in the anti-Netanyahu camp, control the Knesset, unless they are reined in by the politics of coalition building.

Expediting the legislation could be largely symbolic, since the bills would still have to pass three readings and it’s unclear if there would be enough time for this legislative process to be completed before the Knesset would be dispersed if the country heads to a fifth election.

Should Lapid or another politician succeed in forming a coalition, that government would then take control of the Knesset’s legislative agenda. In the interim, however, there is a narrow window of political opportunity for the Israeli right to make substantive legislative changes.

This includes legislation that would set in motion a two-year process to legalize some 70 West Bank outposts and provide them with de-facto legal standing in the interim.

Another bill would also repeal the 2005 Disengagement Laws under whose terms Israel withdrew from Gaza, destroying 21 settlements there and uprooting four settlements in northern Samaria. Passage of the bill, however, would not mean an Israeli return to Gaza, which is now ruled by Hamas. But it would at least allow Israel to rebuild the four northern Samaria communities that were razed in 2005.