In an unprecedented vote in Israel's parliament on Monday to impeach Hadash-Ta'al MK Ofer Cassif, the Knesset did not reach the required 90 votes, and the impeachment fell in a vote that split both the coalition and opposition and highlighted the ideological and political fault lines within both camps.
85 voted in favor, five less than the required amount.
Yisrael Beytenu, which initiated the impeachment, was a member of the previous government and is a current opposition party – but is a right-wing party on issues of national security, and its Knesset members voted unanimously in favor of impeachment.
Nearly all the Knesset coalition members from the right-wing parties – the Likud, Religious Zionist Party, and Otzma Yehudit – supported the impeachment. Yisrael Beytenu, a member of the previous government and current opposition party but a right-wing party on issues of national security, unanimously approved the motion. Members of the haredi parties also voted in favor.
Both centrist parties – Yesh Atid and National Unity – enabled their members to vote as they wished, and votes were divided. The members of the two parties who did not vote in favor were absent from the plenum. Labor's MKs also were not present.
Predictably, -Arab parties Ra'am and Hadash-Ta'al voted against.
Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer initiated the impeachment process after Cassif signed in December a petition in support of South Africa's petition to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
"Israel is indeed taking methodological and fundamental steps to erase, starve, abuse, and expel the population of Gaza. It actualizes a policy of erasing possibilities of living, which leads to genocide. It methodologically kills broad swaths of population, leading academics, authors, doctors, medical teams, journalists, and simple citizens," the petition read.
End of a contentious debate
The vote ended a highly contentious debate in the Knesset that began in January, with supporters of impeachment arguing that Cassif's actions supported Israel's enemies, while its opponents argued that he was being singled out as part of a war fervor.
Monday's debate prior to the vote in the Knesset on Monday included dozens of speakers.
Forer said at the beginning of the debate, "We are here to say – no more. There will not be someone sitting in Israel's Knesset who is acting against it.
Cassif said at the end of the debate in his defense that "this impeachment request is based on a clear lie – that I support Hamas's armed struggle. There is nothing further than this, there is no lie more disgusting. Behind the lie is a clear malicious intent – political oppression and silencing of critical voices in general, and Arab civilians and their representatives in the Knesset in particular, with the final goal being their complete exclusion from public and parliamentary discourse.
According to the quasi-constitutional Basic Law: The Knesset, a member of Knesset may be impeached for "supported armed struggle, by an enemy state or terrorist organization, against the State of Israel." While Forer and other MKs argued that supporting a claim of genocide effectively supported Hamas' efforts, Cassif's lawyer and legal advisors from both the Knesset and government argued in January that as damaging as Cassif's comments were, he did not actually support armed struggle, and therefore does not meet the legal requirement for impeachment. The legal advisors also pointed out that Cassif can only be impeached for actions committed during the current Knesset – and therefore, any actions or sayings prior to November of last year cannot be taken into account.
Due to the opinions of the legal advisors, if the impeachment passed, it was likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court. A number of opposition MKs argued that the impeachment's real purpose was to criticize the Supreme Court.