Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot involve himself in the legislation and process of the judicial reforms proposed in January, Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara told Netanyahu in a letter on Thursday, as it would be a conflict of interest with his ongoing corruption trials.
The decision applies to direct or indirect actions by Netanyahu to forward the reforms, she said. There is no restriction on Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who introduced the proposed reforms at the beginning of January, and Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman, who is spearheading the process.
In the letter to Netanyahu, Baharav-Miara said she wished to avoid reasonable fears that the reforms were a conflict of interest in Netanyahu’s three ongoing corruption cases.
Baharav-Miara recently confirmed that the 2020 conflict-of-interest agreement organized by her predecessor to condition Netanyahu’s formation of a government was still in effect.
According to the deal, Netanyahu was restricted in his prime-ministerial powers on matters of legal and law-enforcement authority appointments.
Provisions of the planned reforms would change the Judges Selection Committee to give politicians a majority and change the legal opinion independence of government legal advisers.
Levin and Rothman harshly criticized the decision.
“Yesterday, we heard words that were incredibly severe from a lawyer at a conference held by the Israel Bar Association,” Levin said Thursday in a statement, referring to a lawyer’s comment on Wednesday that he would use live fire, if necessary, not to live in a “dictatorship.”
“One could have expected that the attorney-general would act and express a clear opinion on the issue,” he said. “But no, she and her team are busy writing another legal opinion whose purpose is to prevent a prime minister from voicing his opinions.”
“It turns out that conflicts of interest are strange things,” Levin said. “An elected representative cannot speak about a reform regarding legal advisers, but the attorney-general and her team are allowed to act in order to block a reform that deals directly with their authorities.”
Rothman said at a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs event on Thursday: “We just got a letter that the attorney-general told the prime minister that because he has a case in the lower court... he cannot be involved in promoting legislation that [says] the court cannot disqualify Basic Laws.”
The order did not make any sense, as reforms regarding changing Basic Laws did not impact his corruption cases, and there was nothing in the reform dealing with criminal procedures, he said.
Rothman cited the letter as proof of how the Attorney-General’s Office had too much power. If Netanyahu wanted to dispute the order at the High Court of Justice, the attorney-general would represent him but would present her position, not his, he said, adding that this made evident how untenable the current system was.
The “heads of the coalition parties” issued a letter saying that they “reject out of hand the attorney-general’s letter.”
“Her letter is a silencing attempt that is directly opposed to the decisive mandate that we received from the citizens in the election,” they said. “There is no connection between Yariv Levin’s reform, whose purpose is to return democracy to Israel, and the prime minister’s cases.”
National Unity MK Gideon Sa’ar, the previous justice minister, defended Baharav-Miara’s position.
“Following contempt of the court in [Shas chairman Arye] Deri’s case, comes contempt of the court from Netanyahu,” he wrote on Twitter. “The High Court approved at the time the legal opinion regarding Netanyahu’s conflict of interest as a defendant and determined that the issue was at the core of the attorney-general’s role. The mafia-like announcement by the heads of the coalition is pushing Israel one step closer toward dictatorship,” Sa’ar wrote.