Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kreuzer was elected on Wednesday as the Knesset’s second representative on the Judicial Selection Committee, clearing a hurdle towards convening the committee – whose makeup is one of the most controversial issues in the government’s proposed judicial reforms.
The anonymous Knesset vote on Wednesday was strikingly unremarkable compared to the drama that unfolded in the Knesset’s initial vote for its two representatives on June 14, during which opposition candidate MK Karin Elharrar was elected to the first spot – with the support of at least four votes from the coalition.
The Judicial Selection Committee is responsible for the election of judges at all levels of Israel’s court system. According to the current law, which has existed since 1953, the committee includes nine members: three High Court justices, one of whom is the chief justice; two ministers, one of whom is the justice minister; two Knesset members; and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association (IBA). A 2008 amendment requires there to be a majority of seven out of nine votes for appointments to the Supreme Court. A 2014 amendment added that one each of the judges, ministers, MKs and IBA representatives must be a woman. Although not required by law, out of the two Knesset spots, the coalition traditionally occupies one spot and enables the opposition to occupy the other.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin and other proponents of the judicial reforms argue that the Bar Association members have an interest in siding with the judges before whom they appear in court. This gives the judges a de facto majority in the committee and the ability to choose whomever they see fit to the lower courts. In addition, the requirement for the special majority in electing Supreme Court justices gives the three judges on the court veto power.
Levin argued upon announcing the judicial reforms in January that the elected representatives of the people should be the ones appointing the nation’s judges, and the coalition then began to advance a proposal to amend the committee’s makeup such that the governing coalition would have an automatic majority.
MK Yitzhak Kroizer (L) attends a Constitution committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem, on February 28, 2023 (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)The opposition, however, argued that giving the coalition complete power over judicial appointments will turn these appointments into part of the political give-and-take, and thus create a system where judges are chosen due to their political affiliations and not their skill or expertise.
The bill to amend the committee’s makeup nearly passed in late March, but stalled at the last minute due to the widespread strikes and warnings of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of its potential harm to national security.
Knesset protocol requires the plenum to elect its two representatives within four months of a given Knesset’s formation, but the coalition changed the protocol to seven months so as to give itself time to amend the committee’s makeup. The current Knesset formed on November 15, and the deadline was therefore June 15.
As the deadline approached last month, Lapid and Gantz announced that if the coalition decides to break with tradition and elect two members of the coalition to the committee, they would view this as a sign that the government intends to follow through with the politicization of the judicial appointment process, and would thus leave the talks at the President’s Residence, which were ongoing at the time.
After realizing that he could not ensure that the opposition’s representative, Elharrar, would be elected, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided on June 14 minutes before the vote was scheduled to start, to attempt to use a special mechanism in order to delay the vote by another month. The move failed, and Elharrar was elected with the support of at least four votes from the coalition, who decided under the safety of anonymity to defy the prime minister’s orders. However, a second representative was not elected, and a repeat vote was thus scheduled for Wednesday, July 12.
Lapid and Gantz announced soon after the vote in June that they were freezing the talks at the President’s Residence. The two argued the delay was a violation of understandings between them and the coalition, and that it proved that the coalition still intends to try to amend the committee’s makeup.
Netanyahu charged that Lapid and Gantz’s decision to leave the talks proved that their intention all along had been to waste time – and announced that the coalition would once again attempt to pass parts of the judicial reform without the opposition’s consent, beginning with the reasonableness standard bill, which passed its first reading in the Knesset plenum late Monday night.
Otzma Yehudit received a commitment in its coalition agreement with the Likud that it would receive a spot on the Judicial Selection Committee, and Kreuzer was named the party’s representative. His election ended the Knesset procedure to fill its two spots on the committee.
Levin refuses to commit to convening the committee
However, Levin has yet to announce the second minister on the committee and also has not committed to physically convening the committee any time soon, despite dozens of vacancies throughout Israel’s court system. The justice minister controls when to convene the committee and theoretically could refrain from doing so as long as its makeup is not altered.
The ending of the Knesset’s election process, however, is likely to lead to increased pressure on Levin to convene the committee, and a number of NGOs may even appeal to the Supreme Court in order to force the justice minister to do so.
Along with the judicial selection committee, Knesset members on Wednesday also cast repeat votes for the three religious judicial courts – the Dayanim Selection Committee for Jews, the Kadim Selection Committee for Muslims, and the Kadim Madhab Selection Committee for Druze. In the initial vote in June, National Unity MK Pnina Tamano-Shata was elected to the Dayanim Committee, but no one was elected to the other two.
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