The multifront struggle between the conservative right-wing coalition and the liberal camp

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erusalem streets on Thursday afternoons are normally nothing like Tel Aviv streets. The capital has a high concentration of state employees, who start heading out for the weekend already in the early afternoon.

But over the past two Thursdays on Jerusalem’s Kaplan Street, where the High Court, the Knesset, and government ministries stand, this comfortable routine has been disrupted. Explosive High Court hearings have been scheduled, causing headaches even for the editors of the newspaper weekend supplements, who wait to go to print until late in the day.

Last Thursday, the High Court heard a petition against the funding of the chareidi school networks of Shas and United Torah Judaism, in which the majority of chareidi students are currently educated. An old clause, added exactly 40 years ago to the Budgetary Basic Law, anchored the fiscal status of these networks with the addition of three words — kichlal yaldei Yisrael, “like all the children of Israel” — words whose value, from then until today, has ensured that chareidi children received funding parity with non-chareidi children.

Every attempt over the past decade by chareidi MKs to anchor that parity in more formal legislation has been met with unequivocal legal advice not to touch those three words, added by broad consensus during the 1980s unity government of Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres.

But all of that is now out the window. What had been agreed upon for a generation has now become part of the multifront struggle between the conservative right-wing coalition and the liberal camp, represented now by the attorney general and the High Court, who view themselves as the last fortress yet to fall.

“Israel has ceased to be a liberal democracy,” said former High Court president Aharon Barak just a week ago.

The surreal situation reached its peak with a single petition submitted by Yesh Atid against the transfer of funds to chareidi educational institutions on the grounds that some of them do not teach the state’s core curriculum. The High Court rushed to issue an interim order freezing transfers amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels — thus seeking to cut off the oxygen supply of thousands of chareidi educators.

But it later came out that the right-wing government had already transferred the funds, even before approval was received from the Finance Committee. In the current political environment, a democratically elected right-wing government is forced to behave like a thief sneaking in the night.

This Thursday promises even more fireworks. A seniority-based panel of the three most veteran High Court justices — President Yitzhak Amit, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, and Justice Dafna Barak-Erez —will hear petitions demanding that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dismiss Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Usually I can tell you the outcome of such a panel if you tell me who sits on it. When the appointment of Shin Bet chief David Zini came before a High Court panel that included conservative Justice Alex Stein, President Amit found himself shifting uncomfortably in his chair as his learned colleague, credentialed with degrees from London and the United States, made it clear that there is no way to bypass the law granting appointment power to the prime minister.

One of the stumbling blocks — or cornerstones, depending on one’s point of view — of the judicial reform is the authority vested in High Court President Yitzhak Amit to determine the composition of panels. In practice, this is the most effective tool in the president’s hands, on a High Court that today has more conservative judges than liberal ones.

Knesset Constitution Committee chair MK Simcha Rothman told me this week that it is too early to eulogize the judicial reform. Alongside the almost singular success of appointing David Zini as Shin Bet chief — which appears to be a kind of consolation prize — Rothman pointed to two bills queued for passage during the current term.

The first is the splitting of the attorney general’s powers, intended to neutralize half of the position’s authority. The second is stripping the High Court president of the power to determine panel composition and transferring it to the random, computerized selection of the High Court’s “smart” system.

But in the meantime, Amit is here to exert influence, and the hearing on Ben-Gvir’s dismissal — by the panel whose composition was determined by the president — could be the most significant hearing of this term.

Nothing to Lose

Who would have believed at the beginning of the current government’s term that of all Netanyahu’s coalition partners, Ben-Gvir would be the least threatening in the final stretch? With the chareidim threatening from the outside over the draft crisis, and Bezalel Smotrich — hovering above and below the electoral threshold in the polls — threatening in order to stay relevant, Ben-Gvir is perceived as the most stable of the partners.

The cabinet meeting a week ago, in which the attorney general’s opinion against Ben-Gvir was discussed, was the first time in the term that Bibi appeared to be heading toward a direct confrontation with Baharav-Miara. Netanyahu made it clear to Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon, who was present at the meeting, that his boss’s support for the petitioners’ demand to fire Ben-Gvir is unlawful.

In doing so, Netanyahu gave the signal for a group assault by cabinet ministers on the attorney general, with almost all the ministers making it clear that if the High Court orders the dismissal of the national security minister, Israel will, for the first time, plunge into a constitutional crisis.

Ben-Gvir himself has nothing to lose from the event. If, despite the attorney general’s support, the High Court refrains from issuing an order and does not require Netanyahu to explain why he is not dismissing the country’s number-one cop, we will get a steroid-enhanced Ben-Gvir through the end of the term.

But even if the justices adopt the attorney general’s opinion and, at the end of the legal battle, order Netanyahu to dismiss Ben-Gvir, the minister — who has authority over the police but whose true talent is monopolizing media — will emerge as the big winner.

If Netanyahu refuses to comply with the High Court’s order, it will be a powerful strike, first and foremost for Ben-Gvir. But even if Bibi folds and dismisses him, Ben-Gvir will celebrate all the way to the ballot box.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1095)