Former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, who resigned on Wednesday, slammed the Supreme Court for entering a political discussion “to which it is not a party and its insides it is not familiar with.”
The court ruled Edelstein must hold a vote about who the next speaker will be despite a law saying that a new speaker will be appointed by the Knesset once a government is sworn in.
The law is a recent one, and before it each new Knesset had the oldest member serving as the speaker until a new one was appointed by the government. Edelstein had been serving as speaker for the past two years despite the failures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government, the current one being a care-taker government.
Edelstein warned that the “court ruling might prolong the political paralysis in the country” and resigned rather than holding the vote, which would be, some say, a violation of the boundaries between the Knesset and the court.