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Blueprint Reportedly Discussed by President Herzog

On 12 February 2023, in a special speech, President Yitzhak Herzog presented a compromise proposal upon which negotiations on the government’s plan for a regime revolution would be based. Zulat congratulates the Honorable President for enlisting in the effort to block the government’s moves to fundamentally change the regime in the State of Israel and the sensitive balances between the three branches of power.

On 7 March 2023, a detailed version of the blueprint “leaked” to the media and was promptly denied by Beit Hanassi (“What was published this morning was not approved by the President, nor by anybody on his behalf. It should be emphasized that this is not the President’s blueprint, but one of many proposals forwarded in recent weeks by researchers and academics from different institutes across the country. The President has yet to finalize a blueprint, which will then be presented to Israel’s citizens.”). At the same time, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Knesset Constitution Committee Chairman Simcha Rotman said the blueprint was unacceptable to them since it would “emasculate the reform,” and MK Rotman asserted that he would continue to advance the government’s bills in his committee in the following days.

Despite the President’s good intentions and Beit Hanassi’s denial, the reported blueprint fails to address the real threat to the survival of Israel’s democratic institutions and could very well become a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Following are Zulat’s initial comments regarding some of its components:

 

  • The blueprint’s basic premise is wrong, given that it attempts to deal “surgically” with some of the controversial proposals while ignoring the fact that they form a legislative package conducive to regime change.
  • Shielding Basic Laws from judicial review except if a procedural flaw occurred in their legislation is the blueprint’s main ‘Achilles heel’ and will obviate the need for an override clause.
  • Anchoring the Supreme Court’s authority to conduct judicial review of ordinary laws only insofar as they contradict Basic Laws is meaningless given that there will be no judicial review of Basic Laws, nor of ordinary laws infringing on rights recognized in case law as a derivative of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, such as the right to equality and freedom of expression that have yet to be explicitly anchored in Basic Laws.
  • Incorporating explicit recognition of the rights to equality, freedom of/from religion, and freedom of expression into Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is indeed welcome but useless, as it does not address the elimination of judicial review of Basic Laws and ordinary laws infringing on these rights.
  • Changing the Judicial Selection Committee’s composition will increase its politicization and decrease its professionalism.
  • The blueprint would weaken the independent and professional status of the legal counsels of government ministries and would introduce position-of-trust characteristics to their jobs.
  • The proposal regarding the reasonableness standard would emasculate it and render it ineffective.

Zulat has additional criticism of other elements of the blueprint which, if need be, it will address in the future, along with any new blueprint that is published.

 

 

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Dr. Maha Sabbah Karkabi

 

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.

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Prof. Frances Raday

Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.

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Dr. Rawia Aburabia 

Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.

Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.

 

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Ron Kessler

With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.