Israel General Discussion: Dawn of the Post-Netanyahu Era

[NewYorkExpress]

Israeli Government defeated on vote to extend regulation that that would bar Palestinians who marry Israelis from becoming citizens of Israel. 

The new Israeli government suffered its first major setback in the early hours of Tuesday morning when it failed to secure enough votes to extend a regulation that effectively bars Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza married to Israelis from becoming citizens.

The coalition had agreed to amend the law to grant 1,600 Palestinians living in Israel residency visas, while allowing for a six-month extension to find solutions for thousands of other Palestinians living in Israel.

But the law failed to pass in the Knesset with lawmakers voting 59-59 after the opposition Likud Party and its allies voted against extending the ordinance, in a move aimed at hurting the new coalition government, even though in principle the party supports the law. A rogue member of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's Yamina party also voted against the law.

The Islamist Ra'am party, also known as the United Arab List, which made history by being the first Arab party to join a governing coalition, split its votes with two members voting for the law, and two abstaining, thus denying the coalition a majority.

I have to wonder if this already the end of the road of the coalition, and if new elections are imminent again....

[NewYorkExpress]

Israeli Supreme Court upholds Nation-State law.

The High Court of Justice upheld the Nation-State Law on Thursday, as the justices voted 10-1 to reject 15 petitions against the law. They had been asked to determine if the law was fit to be a part of Israel’s future constitution, given its content.

In explaining the verdict, the High Court said it was not within its purview to order the law be canceled or be involved in its content as a basic law. Regarding the intent of the law, the court said it is to establish the Jewish character of the state without diminishing its democratic nature.

The law is “another component of Israel’s emerging constitution that is intended to anchor the components of the identity of the state as a Jewish state, without diminishing from the components of the state’s democratic identity that are anchored in the other Basic Laws and constitutional principles that institute the legal system in Israel,” the court said in its opinion.
Justice George Karra, the lone dissenter, said some parts of the law challenge Israel’s democratic nature. The law ignores Arab and Druze citizens of Israel and harms the principle of equality, which is not explicitly established in the law, he wrote in the minority opinion.

[NewYorkExpress]

Israeli Supreme Court legalizes same-sex partners having surrogate mothers.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday cleared the way for same-sex couples to have children through surrogate mothers, a move hailed by lawmakers and activists as a victory for LGBTQ rights.

The court ruled in 2020 that a surrogacy law, which had expanded access to single women but excluded gay couples, “disproportionately harmed the right to equality and the right to parenthood” and was unlawful.

It gave the government a year to draw up a new law, but parliament failed to meet the deadline.

The court said Sunday that “since for more than a year the state has done nothing to advance an appropriate amendment to the law, the court ruled that it cannot abide the continued serious damage to human rights caused by the existing surrogacy arrangement.”

The change in the law is to take effect in six months to allow the formation of professional guidelines, it said.

[NewYorkExpress]

Ra'am is threatening to bring down the government.

Spelling fresh trouble for Israel’s new and unprecedentedly diverse government, the Islamist Ra’am party said Sunday that it was halting its parliamentary cooperation with the coalition — denying it a majority, at least temporarily, at a critical time in which the government must muster a Knesset majority to pass the state budget.

Ra’am MK Walid Taha tweeted that the party would no longer take part in Knesset committee meetings nor vote in plenum sessions until further notice.

Taha didn’t specify why Ra’am was taking the step, but various Hebrew media outlets quoted Ra’am sources saying the party wouldn’t allow the coalition to hold talks with the predominantly Arab Joint List opposition party, which could weaken Ra’am.



Unlike Ra’am, the Joint List is not part of the new government, but it can still provide the coalition with support by voting for or abstaining on a given piece of legislation.

The Joint List has been fiercely critical of Ra’am’s decision to become the first Arab party to join an Israeli coalition.


Reports said many coalition parties have been holding talks with the Joint List on potentially supporting the state budget, which must be passed within 100 days of the government’s swearing-in or the government falls. The coalition has a razor-thin majority of 61 lawmakers in the 120-seat Knesset, meaning Ra’am’s revolt denies it a parliamentary majority.

[NewYorkExpress]

Yuli Edelstein makes it official. He's running against Netanyahu for leadership of Likud.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s No. 2 in Likud, Yuli Edelstein, officially announced in an interview with Channel 12 on Monday evening that he will run against Netanyahu for the Likud leadership whenever a primary will be held.

Edelstein already told The Jerusalem Post in June that he was ready to challenge Netanyahu. But this was the first time he said it before the cameras.

No date has been set for the next Likud primary, and most of the candidates want to wait to set a date until after the Knesset votes on bills aimed at preventing Netanyahu from running again. But Edelstein said he wanted the race held “as soon as possible.”

“We will always stay in the opposition with Netanyahu,” Edelstein said. “Netanyahu has already tried four times, how can we succeed with him the fifth time? With Netanyahu we will never return to power.”

Edelstein placed himself politically to Netanyahu’s Right, noting that he was part of the group of Likud rebels that opposed withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, while Netanyahu voted in favor of the disengagement.

[NewYorkExpress]

The former head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy, says Netanyahu made a mistake attempting to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a "big mistake" by trying to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal as it brought Tehran closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, said Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief during Netanyahu's first term as prime minister.

Speaking on the Haaretz Weekly podcast, Halevy said, "I have always thought that it was a grave mistake to pressure the previous President of the United States, Donald Trump, to leave the agreement, to more or less cancel the United States’ involvement in this aspect of the relationship with Iran.

“I thought it was a big mistake and the fact of the matter is if we look at the events which took place [since Trump exited] the agreement on behalf of the United States, the situation versus Iran has become all that much worse.”

According to Halevy, Netanyahu also made a significant mistake by publicizing Mossad operations against Iran, which were part of “an attempt to shame the Iranians” but which backfired and produced “negative” results.

[NewYorkExpress]

The Netanyahu's are suing Ehud Olmert for saying they are mentally ill.

Two former Israeli prime ministers have faced off in court in Tel Aviv, as Benjamin Netanyahu and his family began a defamation suit against Ehud Olmert.

Mr Netanyahu, his wife Sara, and their eldest son Yair are suing Mr Olmert for $269,000 (£198,000) in damages for saying that they were mentally ill.

Mr Olmert made the claim in two Israeli TV interviews last April.

He is arguing that it was not libellous because it was true, and also that he was clearly expressing an opinion.

The suit filed by the Netanyahus accuses Mr Olmert of "obsessive efforts to harm their good name in public, out of jealousy and deep frustration".

It is based on two interviews he gave in the wake of Israel's last general election, when Mr Netanyahu was attempting to remain in power while standing trial on corruption charges.


In the first, Mr Olmert told DemocraTV: "What can't be fixed is the mental illness of the prime minister and his wife and son. That's not fixable."

In the second interview, with Channel 12, he refused to retract the claim and laughed when warned that he might be sued.


At Monday's hearing Mr Olmert was asked by Judge Amit Yariv what he had based his comments on.

"I followed their actions, I heard recordings of the family, I conferred with experts and people who are associated with them and know them well," he answered, according to the Times of Israel. "They described to me behaviours that are popularly seen as abnormal, crazy behaviour."

[NewYorkExpress]

With Ramadan, Easter and Passover occurring at the same time, it was assumed there would be violence in Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that violence, Raam has suspended participation in the government.

Clashes around Jerusalem’s Old City during the rare confluence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter stoked fears of more widespread violence and threatened to fracture Israel’s fragile governing coalition Monday.

The coalition’s single Israeli Palestinian party announced it was temporarily suspending its participation in the alliance in protest of police actions against protesters at al-Aqsa Mosque in recent days and of escorting Jewish worshipers onto the site.

The party’s move is largely symbolic because the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, is not in session. But the coalition, which includes members from the right and left wings of Israeli politics, was already on the brink of collapse after a conservative lawmaker defected this month, leaving it without an outright majority. Political observers said the government will remain in a precarious position as it strains to keep calm amid the masses of Muslim, Jewish and Christian pilgrims pouring into the city’s ancient core.

I would say Raam is in deep trouble because if they don't bring down the coalition, Israel's Arab population is going to largely regard them as traitors and they will be swept out of the Knesset altogether. If they do, we go to elections again, and Benjamin Netanyahu likely will lead Likud to a governing coalition and become Prime Minister again.

[NewYorkExpress]

Gil Tamary, a journalist with Channel 13 news is in trouble after broadcasting from Mecca's Kabaa, in violation of Saudi law restricting access to the site to Muslims.

An Israeli journalist has breached a total ban on non-Muslim access to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, triggering an online backlash and potentially straining growing ties between Tel Aviv and Gulf nations.

Israel’s Channel 13 News aired a 10-minute report on Monday in which journalist Gil Tamary drove past the Grand Mosque that houses the cube-shaped Kaaba, the holiest shrine in Islam, and climbed the Mount of Mercy.


Tamary, who was accompanied by a local guide whose face was blurred to prevent identification, lowered his voice while speaking to the camera in Hebrew and at times switched to English to avoid revealing himself as Israeli.

The report was billed as a scoop and the journalist the first Jewish Israeli reporter to document the annual Muslim pilgrimage of Hajj.