Lapid, Sa'ar warn against 'return of judicial reform'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to fire Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara in order to preserve the governing coalition, opposition leader MK Yair Lapid claimed on Monday.

Lapid cited what he claimed was a coordinated media campaign initiated by ministers Amichai Chikli, Shlomo Karhi, and Dudi Amsalem as proof, but said he also had “other information” indicating this. He did not elaborate further regarding this other information.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to the accusation or to a query posed by The Jerusalem Post on the issue.

Lapid’s claim came during a press conference prior to his party’s weekly meeting. Lapid commended Baharav-Miara for acting to enforce the High Court of Justice’s ruling that canceled the haredim’s exemption from IDF service and barred the state from providing funding for military-aged ultra-Orthodox men who refused to enlist.

According to Lapid, the barring of funds could deeply affect haredi families. He added that the haredi parties could not afford for this to happen, as they would not be able to stay in government. However, if Baharav-Miara were to be removed from her position, the process of halting the funds would freeze and the haredi would remain in government. This is Netanyahu’s incentive to fire her, Lapid claimed.

He said that his party would not allow this to happen while simply politely protesting “from the sidelines.”“We will not be part of a nondemocratic state. We will not accept the return of the coup d’état (in reference to the government’s judicial reform) – during wartime on steroids,” Lapid declared.

“We will not rule out any step or act, beginning with mass strikes, increasing these by taking the struggle to the streets, and ending in a situation where there is a collective resignation from the Knesset. We will not partake in pretending that Israel is a democracy if it stops functioning as one,” Lapid stated.

He was not the only member of the opposition to warn against a return of the government’s judicial reform, which originally led to widespread protests and social strife in 2023.

Judicial reform

In his weekly statement on Monday, United Right MK Gideon Sa’ar addressed a bill proposal by one of the judicial reforms’ architects, MK Simcha Rothman (the Religious Zionist Party), to shift the authority of appointing an ombudsman to oversee Israel’s judicial system from the judicial system itself to the Knesset. Sa’ar argued that this was a “full return to the October 6 agenda (prior to the war),” as it would lead to the politicization of the role of the ombudsman.

“It is one thing if they propose giving more teeth to this role – we could understand the rationale. But they only care about the Knesset electing (the ombudsman). This is very interesting. Why? Maybe because the judges (the ombudsman) will then campaign in the Knesset, and afterwards, they will need to answer to some politician or other, a situation whereby some judges could be harmed, given that an official complaint might be launched against them,” Sa’ar charged.

On a different issue that led to harsh criticism of the attorney-general on Sunday, Baharav-Miara’s position regarding the process of appointing a new civil service commissioner, one who is responsible for implementing government policy on management and personnel in the public sector, was challenged.

Notably, the process of appointing a commissioner is not regulated by law. Following the appointment of then-outgoing Commissioner Daniel Hershkovitz in 2018, the Netanyahu-led government at the time formally decided to regulate the issue ahead of the next appointment. But this did not occur.

Netanyahu requested that he make the current appointment and then have it ratified by Israel’s Senior Appointments Advisory Committee, which is responsible for ratifying seven senior appointments – which do not include the civil service commissioner.

However, Baharav-Miara ruled that this process was not legally viable, and instead adopted a proposal by the Prime Minister’s Office’s legal adviser, Shlomit Barnea-Fargo, to form an independent appointment committee led by a retired judge.

The issue came up in the government’s weekly meeting on Sunday, and again on Monday in the Knesset Constitution Committee, chaired by Rothman. During the Knesset discussion, Rothman criticized the attorney-general’s representative, Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon, arguing that “you (The Office of the State Attorney) wants to appoint the civil service commissioner, to hold all of the cards in your hands – against the law, against protocol, and against basic proper governance.”