By Wednesday afternoon, everyone was preparing for another battle.
A day before the hearing by the composition of 11 judges at the High Court, on the question of whether to approve the appointment of MK Aryeh Deri as minister, the cards were in the hands of the supreme judges and the political system held its breath.
Will the appointment be disqualified?
Will this cause the new coalition to enact the overcoming clause?
In the evening the cards were destroyed.
The statement of the new Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, on the subject of legal reforms, eased the tension and transferred the dilemma to the judges' table.
Between the lines of the expected reforms, Levin's sharp message emerged: Gentlemen of the judges, things are expected to change, cheeses are going to move, the lost balance is about to return.
High Court of Justice, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
On the way to a revolution in the judicial system?
Justice Minister Levin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Levine is the most efficient card maniac around.
In recent months, at the same time as managing the excruciating coalition negotiations, he designed and prepared the legal reform that has been at the core of his political activities for nearly 20 years. Away from the spotlight, almost secretly, he also conditioned his entry into the Ministry of Justice on the commitment that he would be able to make the necessary changes.
Levin, a clean, moderate, level-headed and statesmanlike man, one that even the spy planters and the old age questioners from Saladin would find it difficult to smear with mud, understood that the struggle for Israeli democracy, the operation to restore the power they appropriated to themselves without the authority of the supreme judges, had already begun - and for a long time.
He understood that there was no point in waiting until the judges were in their best interest to decide whether the composition of the new government was reasonable in their eyes.
Levin is working to establish facts on the ground, thereby marking the direction the Likud party intends to take, not only as a shaper of reality, but as the dominant and leading factor in the entire coalition;
The initiating, implementing and final deciding factor in the issues at hand.
This is an important political statement in the first week of the government's existence, and also the actual fulfillment of the will of the voters.
In the Israeli legal milieu, the one who believes he is the embodiment of the enlightened public and tries to impose his values on the ignorant citizens, of course sees Levin's plan as a declaration of war.
According to one of the writers, he is referred to there as "evil incarnate".
President Hayut (archive).
Should you worry?, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
A disaster or a croissant
Let there be no doubts: this will be an all-out war.
The clash of authorities is a fait accompli.
From Givat Ram to the Ministry of Justice building they will fight, and will not easily give up an ounce of their strength.
In the coming months we will hear about the darkness that has fallen on the land, lamentations will be written about the old, beautiful and good Land of Israel that is gone, and the experts will exaggerate comparisons to Poland, Hungary and even Iran.
There will surely also be those who will remember the winds that blew in Germany in the 1930s.
This is the level of arguments.
Even the emissaries of the legal aristocracy in the Knesset do not intend to freeze the yeast.
Levin has not yet finished answering the journalists' questions, and all the bells have already started ringing and all the alarms have been set off.
The expected pressure on the government and the coalition from within the Knesset and outside the Mishkan is expected to be enormous.
The stream of worried, disturbed and ultra-Orthodox public letters will continue to flow, and the recruitment of foreign parties is also on the agenda.
Levin, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
This week, after releasing a video in which he vowed to fight the reforms proposed by the Minister of Justice, the opposition leader rushed to board a plane. He intended to travel to the United States, according to various reports, where the former prime minister planned to mobilize sections of American Jewry to fight the government elected by citizens Israel. In the meantime he will spend a weekend in Paris. Disaster will wait after the croissant.
Contrary to Ho-Ha Halfidi, the chairman of the state camp, Benny Gantz, indicated an alternative direction and proposed to establish a broad committee to discuss necessary changes in the judicial system. It is worth mentioning that this is the party that before the elections was confident of the victory of the Change Bloc, and pledged to lead a "reform to strengthen stability", in which It would be almost impossible to topple a government with parliamentary tools.Suddenly they remembered the need for dialogue, for broad agreements, for action across parties and sectors.
Lapid in Natbg,
Behind the scenes, familiar figures are working in an attempt to find a way to get the chestnuts out of the fire in a roundabout way, through the Netanyahu trial.
Messages about the need to reach a lenient plea deal are conveyed to the system as something worthy of consideration, ideas about pardoning Netanyahu through the president of the state are circulating among senior officials.
Any tool that might rescue the justice system from the strait it has thrown itself into is on the table.
Standing up to these, and especially to the honey-coated proposals of unity and reconciliation, will be the real test of the government, the coalition and the entire right.
Dialogue is not a dirty word, broad agreement is also a worthy goal.
Minister Levin clarified that he intends to conduct an orderly process and also invite the opponents of the plan to express their opinion, and try to influence the reforms during the legislative processes.
But one precondition must be met for the agreement to produce a discourse on the government's intentions, and that is that this be held in the Knesset - and with full transparency.
In a place where the people's decision is represented and the sunlight illuminates everything.
No committees headed by a retired man, no external experts to manage the process, no endless idle discussions.
If at the base of the reforms is the concept that the power taken from the parliament and thus from the citizens must be returned - it is the Knesset that should be at the center of the discussions.
The Knesset Plenum, photo: Noam Rivkin Fenton
Netanyahu's big test
This is also a personal test for the Prime Minister.
Benjamin Netanyahu rode the wave of promises for far-reaching changes in the judicial system.
In view of his legal situation, he allows Minister Levin to conduct the legal presentation.
The coalition's support for the moves is guaranteed, and the Prime Minister's office is busy with other burning matters, political, security and economic.
Netanyahu will absorb most of the pressures, will be forced to fend off interference from Jewish communities and foreign governments abroad, absorb the wrath of the media and the entire elite and pay off the bill he wrote to the Israeli voter. Whether he is interested in reform or whether he is dragged into it reluctantly, the success of the reform is the success of the prime minister. Failure could be politically and electorally disastrous - and bad for the country.
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