So what is happening with the reform? Here and there reports emerge about the negotiating teams that meet at the president's residence to find a compromise, once every other day the justice minister speaks on the issue, and once every two hours the chairman of the constitution, law and justice committee. Both say that the last word has not yet been said and that the reform outline is not dead yet.
The legal reform will not pass. It will not pass because it was presented in a distorted way and fell as a ripe fruit in front of the opponents of the coalition who managed to stop it. And it will not pass because the right does not have a majority to pass it. In the situation that has been created, there are probably more than four Knesset members on the right, mainly from the Likud, who will not vote in favor of it. So there is no more reform.
So why mess up the matter, keep this controversy in the headlines, give arms and ammunition to opponents of the government (no matter what you do) and make their work easier? Who does it benefit from?
From its inception, this reform was not intended to solve a specific, practical problem of the here and now. It is intended to regulate Knesset-court relations, in order to enable governance and remove the threat to democracy in the form of a court with a political agenda whose power is greater than the power of the elected representatives. There is no bloody daily conflict between the Knesset and the court. The issues in dispute can be bridged, and even the dispute between the attorney general's office and the coalition, for which the attorney general's clause was reformed, can be resolved on a case-by-case basis.
But what: there's the fundamental issue. And he, well, should wait. First of all, because it didn't work. It is permissible for the defeated to internalize their defeat. I find it terrible that riots and threats of anarchy and noise and turmoil have succeeded in canceling a legitimate political move, but that's the way it is. Here's the situation. All this - in the practical realm. In the conceptual sphere, how does the leadership allow itself to miss an opportunity that came its way to stop all the moves and express a tremendous confidence-building step with the population, over the head of the weak opposition leadership?
In the face of the threat to democracy from the Supreme Court's parade of judicial activism, it is possible to act in two ways: through a slow and gradual process of selecting conservative judges, accompanied by advocacy and constant strengthening of the conservative approach, or – through a rapid and strong way of comprehensive reform anchored in legislation. The coalition went the other way and failed. It's a kosher and smart way, even if it was a little excessive, even if it had goats in it - but it just didn't work. Didn't go.
And now we must let go of this process, stop dressing up in it, abandon the grip of the eyes for a moment, we have not yet said the last word, and return to the long and short road of a little bit: another judge, another judge, another influence in the Judicial Appointments Committee, because that is what it should be. In front of the people, the prime minister will stand up and announce that with great regret, because of actions that he considers illegitimate, he has been forced to change the course of the coalition, and out of great attention to the feelings of the people and their unjustified fears, he is shelving, for an unknown time.
(And after a week there will be a protest against something else. So what. It's not contradictory at all.)
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