The Supreme Court of Israel decided this Wednesday to postpone the implementation of a law approved in March by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) that shielded the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of the possibility of being challenged or declared unfit to perform the functions of his office.
The ruling was approved by a majority of 6 of 11 judges, and dictates that the application of the law “will be postponed until the next Knesset begins its term”, after general elections are held, that is, when a new prime minister is elected, the court said in a statement.
Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, which occupies 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, promoted the amendment to the Basic Law (of a constitutional nature) to prevent the attorney general or the court itself from considering that the prime minister has a conflict of interest –by promoting a controversial judicial reform while facing several corruption trials – and ordered his resignation.
Although it does not repeal the amendment, The Supreme Court argued in its ruling that it is “clearly personal in nature and constitutes an abuse of authority.”
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a civil organization that filed the appeal against the amendment before the Supreme Court, called the ruling a “great public victory.”
The amendment was “absurd, crudely adapted to the personal needs of a prime minister accused of crimes,” the organization said in a statement.
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The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The court's ruling “contains an important message: the Basic Laws are not a piece of putty in the hands of the prime minister, which he can change into new ones according to his political and legal needs, with the occasional majority he possesses” in Parliament, Add.
This is Netanyahu's second legal defeat this week, after the Supreme Court annulled a key law of the controversial judicial reform on Monday. that took away the power of the court itself to review and overturn government decisions based on whether they are reasonable or not.
Since the judicial reform was announced in January of last year, a historic anti-government protest movement – which considers that the reform undermines democracy, the division of powers and the rights of minorities – held massive demonstrations every week, which did not stop until that war broke out between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7.
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Some point out that This deep social polarization distracted the Government from its Security tasks and facilitated the Hamas attack that sparked the war. and left some 1,200 dead and 250 kidnapped in Israel.
EFE
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