President Herzog bypasses the Knesset and leads to a compromise in the legal reform with the help of the legal organizations. After another meeting between the parties that took place yesterday, progress was reported in the talks, but the political system emphasizes that it is not binding on them. The purpose of the discussions between the various organizations is to create an agreement between the institutions on the right side of the political map, and those on the left with the aim of influencing the elected officials so that they will accept the outline that the parties will reach at the end of the hectic discussions.
A political official who spoke with the Mokor Rishon website claims that the talks between the legal authorities do not include commitments from the politicians and in any case the opposition will not support this. According to him, the goal is to create pressure on the elected officials, but they are absent from the discussion that happens between the jurists. The parties participating in these discussions are representatives from research institutes and legal professionals dealing with the issue from the Israel Democracy Institute, the Purpose Institute, the Ecclesiastical Forum, the Institute for the Policy of the Jewish People, the Rubinstein Institute for Constitutional Crises and the Law Lecturers and Lecturers Forum.
The first group includes Prof. Yedidia Stern, Prof. Shahar Lifshitz and Prof. Ariel Bandor from Bar-Ilan University, Prof. Neta Barak Koren and Yoav Dotan from the Hebrew University, and former Deputy Legal Counsel Raz Nazri, and from the second group – Dr. Ronit Levin Shenor from Reichman University , Dr. Uri Aharonson from Bar-Ilan University, Professors David Kretzmer and David Enoch from the Hebrew University, Manny Mautner and Dr. Yofi Tirosh from Tel Aviv University.
In a conversation with a Rishon source earlier today, professor Yedidia Stern, who brought together those concerned with the goal of reaching agreements between them that may later lead to agreements within the corridors, explains the purpose: “This is a group that I established independently that is not related to the president. Ten professors with complex identities whose purpose is to enable those who want reform to receive part of their soul bird, and on the other hand to preserve the classic structure of three authorities with a healthy tension between them.”
The coalition insists that the legislation be brought to the second and third reading within a month, before the Knesset goes into recess, on the eve of Passover. Considering this, the phase of summaries and compromises does not have much time to reach an agreed text, in addition to the opposition’s demand that the legislation be stopped in order to comply with the decrees – which, as mentioned, is not happening. This situation comes to the point where the exact opposite of a compromise is what is happening now, when the proposals are advanced in the Constitution Committee and are expected to pass in the Knesset in the near future.