The Special Committee for Amendments to the Basic Law: The Government, chaired by Knesset member Ofir Katz of Likud, approved the bill to amend the Law on Fortifications for its second and third reading at the end of a series of discussions on Tuesday evening. The committee approved the proposal after rejecting all the reservations submitted to the bill. Nine Knesset members supported the bill and six opposed. According to the bill, the removal of the Prime Minister to prison will have two paths: a notification by the Prime Minister himself that he is physically or mentally unable to fulfill his role, and another path when 75% of the members of the government request the removal of the Prime Minister against his will. The section referring to the cancellation of the judicial review of the process of the Prime Minister’s exit to the fortresses was removed from the wording of the law. The chairman of the committee, Knesset member Katz, claimed that the law is important and protects Israeli democracy and the will of the voter.
At the end of a series of discussions, this evening (Tuesday) the Special Committee for Amendments to the Basic Law: The Government, chaired by Knesset member Ofir Katz of Likud, approved the bill to amend the Law on Fortifications for its second and third reading.
The committee approved the proposal after rejecting all the reservations submitted to the bill (300). The proposal will now be voted on in the second and third readings in the Knesset plenum.
Nine Knesset members supported the bill and six opposed.
According to the bill, the removal of the Prime Minister to prison will have only two paths: a notification by the Prime Minister himself that he is physically or mentally unable to fulfill his role, and another path when 75% of the members of the government request the removal of the Prime Minister against his will.
Unlike the wording of the first proposal, the section referring to the cancellation of the judicial review of the process of the Prime Minister’s exit to the fortresses was removed from the wording of the law.
The chairman of the committee, Knesset member Katz, claimed: “The law is important and protects Israeli democracy and the will of the voter.”
In the previous hearing, the deputy to the ombudsman, attorney Gil Limon, referred to the wording of the revised bill: “What we see before our eyes is a pile of extremely disturbing pieces of legislation, which are being promoted very quickly, using the constitutive authority of the Knesset, for which it was not intended, and which has in them in order to benefit a person’s personal case in connection with the results arising from legal proceedings in his case. Therefore, despite the answer given to some of the difficulties we raised, our principled opposition to the bill remains the same.”
To these words, the Knesset’s legal adviser, attorney Sagit Afik, responded: “The mechanism may not be perfect, but it provides a solution and a successful regulation of the current situation. If you don’t look at the entirety of the laws and only at the issue itself, I think the wording the committee reached creates a mechanism that can be applied in most cases.”
