The state budget will be approved by the end of the week – despite the divisions within the coalition that again grabbed headlines for a few hours – and the gong for renewing the campaign for legal reform will be heard with great fanfare. Justice Minister Yariv Levin is not waiting. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already stuck a stick in the wheels of the legislation he is trying to promote once, and he has no intention of it happening again. Levin is demanding some progress, at least in one section of the reform, to be approved during the current session.
Netanyahu is aware of the battle that awaits him, and is preparing himself. He is currently pinning everything on talks held under the auspices of the president's residence. One or two agreements, even on "minor" clauses such as the reasonableness grounds and the Attorney Generals Law, are enough to present Levin with an achievement and calm the burning area. The opposition is in no hurry to cooperate and demands everything in one package. There are no intermediate agreements. They have no mandate from the protest movement to concede to the Likud.
In recent days, Prime Minister Netanyahu realized that the chances of reaching agreements on certain issues were quite slim, at least as long as Gideon was in the region, and instructed the negotiating team to put proposals on the table on other issues as well, chief among them the most explosive issue of the composition of the judicial selection committee. Under the proposal brought before the opposition on Tuesday, there would be 11 members on the committee: five from the coalition, five from the opposition, and a retired judge who would be the decisive voice and appointed by the justice minister.
This is a far-reaching proposal that is doubtful whether it will be able to change the reality of the Supreme Court in the coming years. But for now, that's the offer. It was placed on the negotiating table at the president's residence without going through the justice minister. That is, Levin did not know that it had been instructed, and moreover, he opposed it at all.
Fortunately for Levin, chances are that this proposal, as well as everyone else, will be rejected by the other side. But even if he remains in office alongside Netanyahu, it appears that the gaps between the two have widened without the ability to bridge. Outwardly, the two convey unity and maintain each other's dignity. As if what existed between them, an intimate relationship of confidants, remained the same. That's really not the case. When Levin speaks harshly about the need to advance the reform immediately after the budget, such as when he called on the masses to come to the million-man demonstration in favor of the reform in Jerusalem, his remarks are not directed to pressure the opposition or as a general declaration of intent, but directly against Netanyahu.
The prime minister refuses to say for now what he will do if the opposition blows up the talks. He claims he is doing this so that he will not later be accused of causing the opposition to flee by putting a gun to their temple. Those close to Levin see Netanyahu's lack of commitment as a sign that he is looking for a way to get off the reform, or at least its main points.
Those close to Netanyahu blame Gideon Sa'ar's presence in the talks for the disagreements so far with the opposition. If it were Gantz alone, or Trooper soldiers, for example, it would have been possible to reach an agreement within a few hours on many issues, they believe. According to them, the clauses of reasonableness and of the attorney generals are almost closed and are already being drafted. The parties have already agreed in principle on a compromise, according to which the attorney generals will not be appointed to a position of trust, as stipulated in Levin's bill, but by a search committee as today, and at the same time, their recommendations will not be binding and it will be possible in the event of disagreements between the attorney general and the minister to hire an external lawyer to represent the minister.
But Saar is not willing to announce that agreements have been reached. It drags the discourse into endless formulations of the document that is supposed to summarize these laws, and mainly denies notification of agreements on certain issues without all the clauses being agreed, including the Judicial Selection Committee and the other hotly contested laws between the parties. In that case, the explosion is closer than ever.
At the moment, the state camp is enjoying the talks. They get credit for the moderate atmosphere, and the polls rise accordingly. Once agreements are reached with the Likud, the credit will run out.
The end of the containment period?
In recent months, the ultra-Orthodox factions have made a strategic decision not to be at the forefront of the legal reform, even though parts of it are their bread, such as the Override Clause and the reasonableness clause, so as not to absorb unnecessary fire that they already thought they would absorb when the draft law entered the legislative process. It was the wrong decision. Over the past week, without being at the forefront of legal legislation and even after giving up on approving the draft law at this stage, the ultra-Orthodox sector has become a target for a frontal attack by protest organizations, the opposition, and the media, following the coalition funds they will receive as part of the approval of the budget.
At once, the ultra-Orthodox theory collapsed that it would be possible to "save" the battles for a later date. The attack on the ultra-Orthodox public and its representatives has reached alarming proportions over the past week, sometimes anti-Semitic. Wild incitement from which the path to violence is a thread. In Tel Aviv, it's hard to walk around the street in an ultra-Orthodox fashion without absorbing chants, nastiness, or at least hateful comments and looks from passersby.
Some ultra-Orthodox representatives in Torah Judaism and Shas are once again hearing voices of heresy over the founding decision they made years ago to become an integral part of the right-wing bloc headed by Netanyahu. If they sat down with the left, they would receive more and be attacked much less, Knesset members in these parties have said in closed and open conversations over the past week.
The ultra-Orthodox have quite a bit to complain about themselves as well. They should have known that the demonstrations would reach them too. In the meantime, there are demonstrations, there is hatred – but there is no draft law, there is no legal reform, and Deri is still a Knesset member and not a minister
They are probably right, but to be honest, they have quite a bit to complain about themselves as well. It wasn't that they had to give up the coalition funds. The attacks on them would not have decreased if they were only 2 billion compared to the 13 billion (total coalition funds, only a minority of them for the ultra-Orthodox). But they should have known that the wild demonstrations would reach them too. In the meantime, there are demonstrations, there is hatred, there is incitement from morning to evening - but there is no draft law, there is no legal reform, and Deri is a Knesset member and not a minister after they gave up in attempts to appoint him. They also ate the (kosher) but smelly fish, and were expelled from the city.
It's not too late to fix it. After the budget passes, instead of crying over their fate and complaining about their membership in the right-wing government, ultra-Orthodox Knesset members can be the main engine behind the legal reform. Join the demand to pass it quickly, despite the demonstrations and blatant protests, to return Deri to the government and pass the draft law. If the demonstrations against them are already ongoing, at least it will be possible to give all those demonstrators a good reason for doing so.
The budget and the burden of proof
Just as in the story of the legal reform, so too with regard to the state budget, the field of public relations is not managed. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is interviewed dozens of times a week, but to no avail. The studios decided that the budget was bad, and that was it.
More than once there is a considerable gap between the dark forecasts of economic commentators, especially when the right wing is in power, and the actual reality, led by Netanyahu, who also knows a thing or two about economics. Even when a terrible recession storm raged outside, Israel remained for the most part a bubble of stability, with a moderate index, interest rates on the floor and no inflation. This was the case during the global crisis in 2008, during the social protests in 2011, and also during the coronavirus. Even when Netanyahu, the first in the world, initiated a two-year budget, he received fierce criticism from commentators and the opposition. Even then, it turned out that he was right, and that they were wrong. All governments since then, including the one he did not head, have adopted the patent, including several countries around the world.
Is the choice to go with the right worthwhile for the ultra-Orthodox? Deri, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
This time the matter is different. The recession burst the Israeli bubble and hit every home in Israel mercilessly. Inflation is well felt, as is the skyrocketing CPI, the cost of living and interest rate hikes time after time. For the first time, Netanyahu, together with Smotrich, was forced not only to maintain a healthy situation but to reverse the trend of the situation he inherited. To bring about growth and lower prices. The burden of proof on him.
Contrary to what is said on every stage, there is some significant news in the budget that will pass this week. For example, the fact that every average family, with three children and earning parents, will save about NIS 36,000 this year as a result of credits and more. News of food competition will also arrive soon, and housing prices may moderate due to the municipal tax fund, which has led to strikes and mayors' protests, but may lead to the construction of hundreds of thousands of new housing units.
Energy limits
A few days ago, late at night, MK Avichai Boaron of the Likud, one of the youngest MKs in the Knesset, was sitting in his room in the Knesset building going through the list of laws that will be discussed in the committees. His eye was on one law, the National Infrastructure Law, whose discussion was scheduled in the Projects Committee of MK Ohad Tal of Religious Zionism. According to the bill, the Israel Land Authority will be required to agree within 45 days to the allocation of land for the construction of infrastructure, and if no answer is given, after 45 days it will be considered a positive answer.
Happy Boaron in his heart. After all, this law is consistent with his desire to build solar farms in the Jordan Valley, a project he is intensively promoting with Energy Minister Yisrael Katz. Boaron quickly devoured all the details of the law, trying to figure out if it would indeed help him set up the project quickly, but when he finished reading, his eyes darkened. The law does not apply in Judea and Samaria. Solar farms can be built all over the country. In the Jordan Valley, no.
Despite the late hour, Boaron called Finance Ministry officials to understand how this happened, and more so in a right-wing government. It quickly became clear that despite Minister Smotrich's explicit instruction that any law leaving his ministry would also apply in Judea and Samaria, this clause was omitted from the law in question. Boaron obtained the chairman of the committee and demanded that he pass a reservation, which applies the law in the Jordan Valley as well. But the deadline for submitting reservations has already passed. The law is already before preparing for its second and third readings, Tal told him.
Boaron insisted and passed the story on to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs and Smotrich's people. At this point, the legal counsel and the treasury woke up and stood on their hind legs. Boaron quickly realized that no one had "forgotten" to apply the law in Judea and Samaria, but that everything was done deliberately by the bureaucratic echelon, which is accustomed to looking at Judea and Samaria as a separate region from Israel.
The matter quickly reached the Attorney General's Office, which appointed its deputy to handle the issue. This is a political issue, a decisive one, and therefore the prime minister must make a decision. The law has already passed, but a decision by the prime minister has not yet been made. If he decides that the law will apply to Judea and Samaria, it will be possible to do so through a government decision. At a meeting of the Likud faction, Boaron told the full story to the Knesset members. The prime minister listened and announced that he intended to take care.
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