Coalition advancing controversial legislation amid war with Iran |
After a two-week halt due to the Iran war, parliamentary debate was set to resume Sunday with the coalition looking to push through a number of controversial bills this week, prompting harsh pushback from the opposition, which accused the government of underhandedly trying to further its agenda under the cover of war.
The legislation set to return to the Knesset’s wartime agenda includes bills that would overhaul the media market, split up the role of the attorney general, and establish a politically appointed panel to probe the failures of October 7, 2023.
The opposition condemned the decision to resume work on the coalition’s legislative agenda during wartime, with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid on Saturday evening publicly accusing Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and “all the extremists” in the coalition of not caring that Israel is at war.
“While the entire country is standing together, the coalition is promoting its extremist agenda and stealing money for political purposes,” Lapid said in a statement.
Similarly, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival in the upcoming election, called the decision to renew work on the legislation “a punch in the stomach of IDF fighters and the public in a time of war.”
And lawmakers from Yair Golan’s The Democrats party sent a letter to Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik “urgently demand[ing] that work on legislation unrelated to the war be suspended.”
Holding such discussions under wartime restrictions, which limit the number of guests who can visit the Knesset, would exclude important stakeholders from the debates and “constitutes a fundamental legal flaw that undermines the integrity of the legislative process and is extremely unreasonable,” the lawmakers alleged.
They demanded “the cancellation of all committee discussions scheduled for this week in the Knesset on legislative proposals that do not fall under the category of ‘war requirements’ or the state budget.”
All Knesset discussions and votes were suspending following the outbreak of hostilities........