The legal advisor to the government Gali Beharev Miara submitted her position to the High Court in the petitions dealing with the plausibility of the appointment of MK Deri as Minister of the Interior and Health in the 37th Government of Israel and the amendment of the qualification clause in the Basic Law: The Government, which changed the legal situation so that nowThe Electoral Commission is authorized to examine whether a person’s conviction disqualifies his eligibility only if he is sentenced to actual imprisonment.
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According to Beharev Miara, “These petitions raise weighty issues, on some of the most important subjects imaginable – the authority of the Israeli Knesset to enact and amend basic laws; alongside the standards and considerations relevant to the appointment of a minister in the Israeli government.”
The hearing on the petitions will take place tomorrow (Thursday) at the High Court with an expanded panel of 11 judges. At the request of Globes and other media outlets, the Supreme Court will broadcast the hearing live.
Radically deviates from the range of reasonableness
Regarding the plausibility of Deri’s appointment to the position of Minister of the Interior and Minister of Health, according to the position of the legal advisor to the government, according to the ruling of the Supreme Court, the clear conclusion in the circumstances of the matter is that the appointment of Deri to the position of minister radically exceeds the scope of reasonableness and nullity.
In 2015 and 2016, the Supreme Court already determined that Deri’s appointment as a minister was on the border of the realm of plausibility, even though 13 years had passed since the last conviction at that time. Now, the additional conviction for committing two criminal offenses, in the month of February 2022, brings the appointment to one that crosses the realm of reasonableness and this is the starting point of the legal hearing. Along with this figure, other important data were taken into account, among them the position of the consultant that defamation was attached to Deri’s actions, and the circumstances of the amendment of the eligibility provision in the Basic Law which were intended to obviate the need to examine the issue of defamation in view of Deri’s criminal conviction as a condition for his appointment as a minister.
The consultant’s position takes into account the long time that has passed since the governmental corruption offenses were committed, and therefore they are given a low weight. On the other hand, weight is given to the fact that this is not a “one-time incident” but a repeated pattern of committing offenses, most of them during his tenure in public office or near Deri’s return to political life, in a way that teaches about his attitude to the rule of law.
Bottom line, the decision to appoint Deri as minister does not give weight to the seriousness of a situation in which a member of the Knesset once again commits crimes that are scandalous, and does not express the heavy weight of considerations of purity of character and the rule of law of those holding the wheel of power. Therefore, it radically deviates from the realm of reasonableness.
The amendment to the Basic Law is not intended to solve a general problem
Regarding the amendment of the legislation, the position of the Legal Adviser to the Government is that the petitions in this regard should be rejected. This is because the way in which the ruling developed the legal possibility to invalidate basic laws due to misuse of the authority of the Knesset to enact basic laws, does not allow the court to intervene in the amendment of the basic law.
However, according to the consultant’s position, as expressed during the discussions in the Knesset by its representatives, the amendment is not intended to solve a general problem, but rather to change the legal consequences of a criminal conviction on the tenure of a minister, and to allow a certain member of the Knesset, who was convicted by law, to be appointed to the position of minister, without That the question of disgrace be examined by the chairman of the election committee. Following this, it was clarified that the authority of the Knesset to enact fundamental laws of the Knesset was not intended to regulate individual matters of Knesset members and the difficulty intensifies because these are sensitive and valuable issues of purity of character, while changing the “rules of the game” after the elections.
The state’s response was submitted through the director of the High Courts Department at the State Attorney’s Office, Attorney Yaner Hellman, and attorneys Moriah Freeman, Matan Steinbuch and Neta Oren from the High Courts Department at the State Attorney’s Office.