The ministerial legislative committee, headed by Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked, plans to discuss a number of controversial bills this Sunday. These bills were distributed today, and anyone who examines these off-the-cuff announcements every Thursday, including the names of the proposed bills, has to ask himself or herself whether there is any real legislative intent behind the numbered items in the document, or whether they are merely public relations spin or window dressing aimed at the members of the political party making the proposal.
One example is a "A ban on criminal investigations against a serving prime minister", to be tabled by MK David Amsalem (Likud). If this bill gets off the ground at all, and given that it will apply only to the prime minister who emerges in the elections for the 21st Knesset, it will accelerate two processes. One is that the law will give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an incentive for calling early elections in order to be reelected, and thus to eliminate the possibility that new investigations will be opened against him. There is, of course, a slight possibility (but it always exists) that Netanyahu will not be reelected, in which case this basic law will apply to the next prime minister. That is what happens with outlandish constitutional laws - the people who enact them are likely to find those very laws working against them.
The second process likely to be expedited by Amsalem's bill is recommendations by the police and/or the State Attorney's Office in investigations in which Netanyahu is a suspect, because the bill will create a "public deadline." Anyone who wants to enact a law enabling Netanyahu to avoid being a suspect starting with the 21st Knesset will see the enforcement authorities shift into high gear right now.
The ministerial legislative committee will also consider a bill canceling the disengagement in northern Samaria. The Jewish communities in northern Samaria - Ganim, Kadim, Sa-Nur, and Homesh - were removed in 2005. The Jewish Home Party wants to return Jewish settlers to these four communities and put things back to the way they were before disengagement. The private members' bill proposed by MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Habayit Hayehudi), David Bitan (Likud), and others has been on the justice minister's desk for eight months, and is reaching the ministerial legislative committee only now. Who there can oppose it? After all, there is no problem among the senior government ministers. Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett wants to annex Area C, in which the communities to be restored are located. Only recently, Netanyahu said that Jewish settlements would not in any way interfere with the creation of a Palestinian state, if and when that happens.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on October 19, 2017
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