Governing by Blitz |
The Israeli governing coalition’s legislative blitz last week was not merely a busy day in the Knesset. It was a calculated display of political timing, coalition discipline, and institutional intent. A series of highly controversial bills were suddenly advanced in defiance of repeated warnings from the Attorney General’s Office. The sponsors of those laws believe that now the political conditions were ripe to move forward.
For weeks, the coalition lacked reliable support from its Haredi partners, who had only partially backed government initiatives while awaiting progress on a military draft exemption bill. Once movement on that issue reassured them, the Haredi parties returned to full voting alignment. Their renewed loyalty provided the coalition with the parliamentary certainty it needed to revive measures central to its broader project of judicial and institutional restructuring.
The result was not an unusually large, dense concentration of contentious bills pushed through in a single day. The tactic was unmistakable: advance as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before political circumstances shift again.
At the core of this legislative push is MK Simcha Rothman’s bill to change how judges are assigned to cases in the Supreme Court, a measure strongly supported by Justice Minister Yariv Levin (his first name should be........