The Legal Adviser to the Government, Gali Beharev-Miara, published today (Wednesday) her full position regarding the appointment of Aryeh Deri to the position of Minister according to which "the appointment radically exceeds the range of reasonableness".
As a reminder, yesterday Beharev Miara informed the High Court that she would not be able to defend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position regarding the appointment of Deri as Minister of the Interior and Health. Netanyahu appointed the private lawyer Michael Rabillo to represent his government's position in the petition to the High Court.
This is a rare step, since the government's position is usually represented by the Attorney General.
The full position
According to the ombudsman, the petitions dealing with the plausibility of MK Deri's appointment as Minister of Interior and Health raise weighty issues, on the most important issues imaginable - the authority of the Israeli Knesset to enact and amend basic laws;
Along with the standards and considerations relevant to the appointment of a minister in the Israeli government.
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.
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, including the position of the consultant that Deri's actions were subject to defamation, and the circumstances of the amendment of the qualification provision in the Basic Law which were intended to eliminate the need to examine the issue of defamation in light of Deri's criminal conviction as a condition for his appointment as minister.
In the consultant's position, the considerable time that has passed since the governmental corruption offenses were committed is taken into account, 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 crimes, 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.
In the 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 scandalous offenses, 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.
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