President denies veracity of leaked judicial compromise proposal slammed by MKs

Purported drafts of a compromise deal produced by President Isaac Herzog on the government’s judicial overhaul were published Tuesday morning, whereupon the president swiftly denied the reports as both sides of the political aisle attacked the ostensible proposal.

Herzog has been working behind the scenes to broker a compromise deal over divisive judicial overhaul plans being pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, revealing on Monday that the sides were “closer than ever” to a deal.

According to a purported draft, Herzog, who has engaged a team of legal experts to produce the compromise offer, is proposing a plan either without any override clause — which would have allowed the Knesset to re-legislate laws struck down by the High Court or pass laws immune from any judicial review — or with a very narrowly applied version.

One version of the leaked proposal, published by Israel Hayom, included a limitation of the “reasonableness” clause under which judges can evaluate and invalidate government or public sector decisions as unreasonable. Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a key architect of the reforms, has pushed to totally disallow the judicial “reasonableness” test, arguing that it is too amorphous.

The alleged compromise offer included a proposal to bar the court from being able to nullify Basic Laws, which have quasi-constitutional standing and, the government argues, should be protected from court interference.

The court would still be permitted to invalidate regular laws, but it would need a full bench of judges present, of whom two-thirds would have to agree. Without this majority, the court would only be permitted to make a non-legally binding declaration that the law is “incompatible” with Basic Laws.

The document, similar to a publication in Ynet on Tuesday, also reportedly proposed increasing the Knesset threshold for voting in Basic Laws, thereby making them harder to legislate or amend. Currently, most Basic Laws can be changed with a simple majority of MKs present, and can be easily manipulated to solve short-term political issues, such as Basic Law legislation passed in 2020 to underpin a failed rotation agreement between Netanyahu and National Unity head Benny Gantz.

Contrary to Levin’s plan, Herzog’s reported proposal would not allow the coalition a controlling majority on the panel tasked with appointing High Court judges.

Regarding the appointment of ministry legal advisers, whose legal advice is currently binding on ministries and who are professionally subordinate to the attorney general, the leaked draft largely leaves the status quo intact, save for “exceptional circumstances” where a minister may ignore their legal adviser and even solicit external legal representation if the issue lands in court.

Presidential denial

After the publication of the leaked document, the President’s Office released a statement “clarifying” that the proposal was simply one of a number under consideration.

“The publication this morning was not to the knowledge of Herzog or anyone acting on his behalf. It should be clarified and emphasized that this is not the president’s outline,” his office said.

“This is one proposal out of many that were presented in recent weeks by researchers and academics from different institutions. Herzog has not yet finalized a final proposal, and after he does, the proposal will be presented to the citizens of Israel,” the statement concluded.

Levin and Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chair MK Simcha Rothman released a joint statement welcoming the president’s clarification, but nonetheless warning that the leaked outline represented a “sterilization” of the fundamental principles of the planned judicial makeover.

The pair thanked the president for his efforts, and added that “there is broad consensus, among the public, academia, high tech, economists and among Knesset members about the need for broad and comprehensive reforms and its fundamental principles.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett endorsed the leaked plan in a tweet on Tuesday, despite Herzog denying its legitimacy, calling it “balanced and good,” and saying that both sides must “show leadership, understand that they must compromise and adopt the outline, in order to avoid a civil war.”

But leaders of the anti-government protest movement slammed the proposal, saying it paved the way for dictatorship.

“The president gave Levin, [Bezalel] Smotrich, Rothman and Netanyahu the keys to dictatorship,” they said in a statement, adding that everything the coalition wanted was provided for in the leaked compromise document.

“This was spitting in the face of the millions of people who have been battling for two months for the sake of Israeli democracy. In contradiction to his public promises, the president conducted a shady unilateral procedure and produced another proposal for dictatorship. We won’t accept it. We won’t live under a dictatorship.”

On the other side of the political aisle, Likud MK Boaz Bismuth also slammed the proposal, labeling it a “surrender to the opposition.”

“I’m in favor of negotiations, I’m not in favor of surrender. Today it’s the reforms, tomorrow it will be Jerusalem,” he tweeted.

Asked about the draft proposal on Ynet radio on Tuesday, Labor head Merav Michaeli bluntly responded that “the answer is no.”

“I’m not ready to give legitimacy to a regime coup that will eliminate Israeli democracy, and that’s what this government is doing,” she said, refusing to address the leaked document’s specifics.

Organizers of protests against the government’s planned drastic overhaul of the judiciary are gearing up for another major campaign to disrupt daily life on Thursday, including blocking roads around Ben Gurion Airport in an attempt to prevent Netanyahu from catching his flight for an official visit to Italy.