Shaked: Next government must give Knesset veto over High Court
By YONAH JEREMY BOBUpdated: OCTOBER 16, 2018 03:49Justice minister Ayelet Shaked at the Maariv conference, October 15, 2018 (Go-Live)
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said that her Bayit Yehudi party would require the next government to give the Knesset a veto over the High Court of Justice as part of its coalition agreement.Speaking at the Maariv Conference in Jerusalem on Monday, she blamed center-left portions of the current coalition for blocking her initiatives to empower 61 Knesset MKs to override the High Court when the court tries to strike a Knesset law as unconstitutional.The issue came up when Shaked was asked what position she would want in the next government and she responded that she would like to stay on as justice minister to pass some of the laws, such as the court circumvention bill, that she has not gotten through as yet.Shaked was asked about her view of allegations that a Jewish person threw the rock that recently killed a Palestinian woman, Aysha al-Rabi, on Friday, which caused her car to crash.The Justice Minister demurred that she wants to wait to hear the results of the investigation which reportedly is being headed by the Shin Bet’s (Israel Security Agency) division, which follows violence by Jews.However, if the police find that the attacker was Jewish, she said she would support bringing them to justice even if they were a Bayit Yehudi supporter.Shaked also said that she hopes that a compromise will be struck regarding the bill to integrate haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the IDF, but that if there are early elections she hopes that Israel’s right-wing voters will turn out in large numbers to make the next government even more right-leaning.Finally, she said that she “wished a mazel tov [congratulations]” to Jewish-Israeli actor Tzachi Halevy and Muslim-Israeli media personality Lucy Aharish on their recently announced wedding.Though the Jewish-Muslim intermarriage has brought heavy criticism from various religious sectors, likely including many of the voters which Shaked represents as an MK of Bayit Yehudi, she said her personal opinion was to be supportive, no matter what.