Netanyahu loyalist elected to judicial selection committee
Final results indicate rebel votes were cast from the coalition for rival candidate Ayelet Shaked
By JEREMY SHARONOsnat Mark reacts during a discussion to cancel the 2013 law limiting the number of ministers, during a House Committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, May 21, 2019(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Despite intense speculation of a coalition rebellion behind the curtain of a secret ballot in the Knesset plenum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s candidate for the judicial selection committee was comfortably elected in a vote on Wednesday afternoon.Likud MK and Netanyahu loyalist Osnat Mark was elected to the committee by a margin of 13 seats over her rival from the opposition MK Ayelet Shaked.She will be accompanied by MK Tzvi Hauser of Derech Eretz, also of the coalition despite the usual convention that one of the two MKs on the committee come from the opposition.Netanyahu has been anxious to exert as much influence as possible over the powerful committee, even including clauses in the coalition agreement with Blue and White about its composition.Opposition MKs have warned that the prime minister’s concern over the make-up of the committee was borne of a desire to influence the appointment of new judges to the Supreme Court who may end up hearing his criminal cases, should he be convicted in the lower courts, and appeal.According to a report by KAN News, Likud officials even threatened Blue and White that should Shaked be elected instead of Mark the prime minister would topple the government and seek elections.A spokesman for Blue and White told The Jerusalem Post earlier in the day that the party was indeed voting with the coalition for Mark, despite some senior sources in the party indicating earlier they would vote for Shaked.Mark received 56 votes, 16 less than the total 72 MKs of the coalition, meaning some Blue and White MKs and likely some Likud MKs as well voted for Shaked.Shaked took 43 votes, likely due to the fact that Arab parties did not support her as well as some members of Yesh Atid.Yisrael Beytenu chair MK Avigdor Liberman alleged that Netanyahu had formulated a deal with the Joint List for them to back Mark in order to guarantee that she made it on to the committee, a charge denied by senior Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi.
Earlier on Wednesday the Movement for Quality Government petitioned the High Court of Justice to prevent Netanyahu from appointing any MK or a government minister to the committee, arguing it would be a conflict of interests due to Netanyahu’s ongoing trial on corruption charges.Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid excoriated his erstwhile political partners in Blue and White for having backed Mark, saying the votes of its MKs betrayed the party’s claim to be defending legal norms from within the coalition.“Blue and White elected to the judicial selection committee the emissary of a prime minister with three indictments,” said Lapid following the vote.“With this their nonsense [of claiming] they are there ‘to protect the rule of law’ has ended. They are there to protect their seats. Gantz, Ashkenazi, Nissenkorn have become collaborators with Netanyahu in the destruction of the rule of law in Israel.”In the vote for places on the rabbinical judges selection committee, Labor MK Merav Michaeli eked out the narrowest of victories over Shaked, 66 votes to 65.The other MK elected to the panel was United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler.Michaeli, an ardent and longstanding advocate for women’s rights, will find herself in a small minority against the dominant control of the ultra-Orthodox religious establishment in the committee.There are however not expected to be any new vacancies opening up on the benches of the regional rabbinical courts or the Supreme Rabbinical Courts in the next 18 months, so the relevance of the committee is likely to be slight.
