The Knesset Has Resumed Its Business, but Both Sides Have Broken Unwritten Rules

Yesterday, eleven months of political stalemate in Israel appeared to have come to an end as the sitting prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his main rival, Benny Gantz, agreed to form a unity government together with some of the smaller parties. This development has fractured Gantz’s Blue and White party into its constituent factions. Meanwhile, the resignation of Yuli Edelstein as interim Knesset speaker—a position meant to be occupied for just a few hours, but which he has held for nearly a year—has allowed the Knesset to resume business as usual.

Although Edelstein’s parliamentary tactics are legally defensible, his opponents have decried them as violations of informal norms and traditions—even as these same opponents have been trying to exploit the unusual political circumstances to give themselves control over legislative committees, and to pass laws that would prevent Netanyahu from remaining prime minister. Haviv Rettig Gur explains:

While Blue and White rails at Edelstein’s “undemocratic” delays, it has proposed several sweeping and never-before-seen constitutional modifications, including legislation that would prevent the current Knesset from dissolving to new elections if it fails to form a government. It suggests passing these amendments using only the threadbare majority at its disposal. That, too—attempting to pass such significant constitutional changes in a newborn Knesset, one that has yet to negotiate a ruling coalition—is unprecedented.

[Yet] Edelstein has acted less nobly than he pretends. He claimed to be delaying the plenum votes in order to force Gantz and Netanyahu to compromise. Perhaps. Then again, his steps only weakened one side’s negotiating position.

Meanwhile, Blue and White, while decrying Likud’s “undemocratic” delays, is hard at work drafting constitutional changes that target a single individual, who also happens to be their chief political opponent. A longstanding but informal Knesset tradition once decreed that significant changes to electoral laws should be allowed to come into force only at a distance of an election cycle or two, to ensure that the rules of the game wouldn’t be altered merely to serve the political needs of the present majority.

Israel’s political system is deep into uncharted waters, and clear-cut answers are few and far between. But one thing became crystal clear on Wednesday: the old rules and longstanding customs that ensured respect across party lines and the smooth functioning of parliamentary politics [have fallen] prey to an unrelenting and debilitating political stalemate.

Whether the new coalition agreement will be able to gain formal approval, and what the legacy of this stalemate will be, remains to be seen.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, Israeli politics, Knesset

 

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa