In judicial reform battle, it's Bibi vs. his own party

Illustration: Sivan Schwam

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AN old Jewish folk story tells of a slave who buys his master a spoiled fish. Forced to choose among the punishments of a whipping, a fine, or eating the fish himself, the slave decides to try the fish. Halfway through, he changes his mind, and decides to take the whipping instead. Halfway through the whipping, he changes his mind yet again, and has to pay the fine after all. By the end, he’s paid all three penalties.

And that just about sums up the week for Justice Minister Yariv Levin. The man who led the coalition on the judicial reform that pushed Israeli society to the brink tried once again to force matters — this time against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, only to crash and burn in spectacular fashion.

Levin’s fate turned on an issue that somehow dominated Israel’s news cycle to the exclusion of the ballooning cost of living, sharply rising interest rates, the Arab sector crime wave, and the terror on the roads of Judea and Samaria. For days, Israeli news outlets trumpeted special coverage of the identities of the two MKs elected to represent the Knesset on the Judicial Selection Committee.

Membership on the exclusive nine-member Judicial Selection Committee assumes outsized importance in every coalition, but usually concerns only the justice minister and the coalition chair, without requiring round-the-clock attention from the prime minister, the president, and the entire political system.

The Judicial Selection Committee has until now been comprised of three representatives from the High Court, two representatives from the Israel Bar Association, two representatives of the government and two representatives of the Knesset. This makeup would have been dramatically revamped under Justice Minister Levin’s reform.

Levin had already pushed a revolutionary bill through two readings of the Knesset that would have shifted the committee’s makeup decisively in favor of the government. But on the eve of the third and final vote, Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for speaking out against the reform, and the night of left-wing protests that followed forced Bibi to give ground, pull the bill, and sit down with opposition representatives for compromise talks in the president’s residence.

Meanwhile, with the reform on hold, the status quo composition of the Judicial Selection Committee remained in force, along with the delicate matter of the need for the Knesset to elect its two representatives. Each side saw the approaching election as a test of the other’s good faith. The opposition wanted the coalition to respect the tradition of granting one of the two seats to an opposition candidate. The coalition wanted to condition this on the opposition’s agreement to two judicial reform issues, on which preliminary understandings had emerged during the talks in the president’s residence.

When the opposition refused and demanded that the coalition support Yesh Atid MK Karine Elharrar’s candidacy for the committee, without connection to the talks, Levin, who’d been sidelined in the course of the negotiations, began exerting pressure from the right to force Netanyahu’s hand.

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Last Wednesday morning, Netanyahu arrived at his Knesset office even more sleep-deprived than usual, after a white night of negotiations with his right-wing allies. Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Rothman, and Levin urged him to play hard ball and elect two coalition MKs in the committee slots, to show the left that the government means business on judicial reform. Deri, Gallant, and others advised Bibi not to give in to the radical right again, warning that breaking with a longstanding norm would stir up the street once again.

As for what Netanyahu himself wanted, it wasn’t hard to guess. In his nocturnal discussions with his allies, Netanyahu sounded like a right-wing version of National Unity chair Benny Gantz, who’s soaring in the polls.

“In all the polls we’ve conducted, the public prefers compromise over conflict, and if we elect two coalition MKs, we’ll be blamed for the blow-up of the talks,” Bibi told his allies.

When he left his residence on the morning of the vote, Bibi had already made up his mind to stick with the norm and elect one coalition MK and one opposition MK to the committee. He made sure to personally communicate his peaceful intentions to President Isaac Herzog, who’s been overseeing the talks like an American official shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

But his resolve didn’t last. He arrived at his office for another marathon of talks that included a shouting match with Tali Gottlieb, a previously anonymous Likud MK and Bibi protégée, and Netanyahu was forced to fold yet again. Constitution Committee Chair Simcha Rothman brought up an obscure technicality that allows the Knesset to vote down all candidates, which would push off the election for another month. Despite personally wanting to keep the peace, Netanyahu had to green-light Rothman’s move, which kept the coalition’s options on the table.

Behind this turnaround was Yariv Levin, who had marshaled Smotrich and Ben Gvir as well as hawkish Likud ministers and MKs. Having been sidelined and snubbed by the prime minister multiple times over the past few months, Levin built up a powerful following reminiscent of the “chishukayim,” the band of rebels led by Arik Sharon and David Levy in the Shamir cabinet of the late ’80s.

Netanyahu, who’s always enjoyed complete dominance over his party, was caught off guard. Too late, he realized that ruling against the justice minister would make him a persona non grata — not just in the White House, but in his own party and government. Against his will, Netanyahu green-lighted Levin’s plan for the entire coalition to vote against all candidates, pushing off the committee vote for a full month.

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Levin left Netanyahu’s office around noon last Wednesday, minutes before the vote, as the big winner of the day. But despite his talents, Levin, having put brawn over brains in the current term, has become the coalition’s Shimon Peres — always winning the exit polls but losing the final tally. Just like the judicial reform, which started with a bang and ended with a whimper, Levin went from winner to big-time loser in a matter of two hours.

What Levin didn’t take into account was how many foes he had within the Likud. Yuli Edelstein, Yoav Gallant, David Bitan, and others had already publicly come out against his handling of judicial reform, but Levin, refusing to learn from his own mistakes, submitted to the test of the ballot box on the assumption that in the privacy of the voting booth, they would all get in line behind him.

The Knesset elects its representatives to the Judicial Selection Committee by secret ballot, behind a screen set up at the side of the plenum hall. And in Wednesday’s ballot, at least five Likud MKs gave Levin a slap to the face. Instead of voting against opposition MK Karine Elharrar, they voted for her, leading to her election by a slim majority of 58 to 56.

When the results of the vote were announced, Levin left the plenum red-faced — not for the first time. One man who didn’t particularly regret the outcome was Netanyahu himself. The man who watched as Herzog received a White House invitation while his own has yet to arrive is petrified at the prospect of the protest movement being rejuvenated. And that’s exactly what would have happened last Wednesday evening had Levin’s scheme born fruit.

On paper, Netanyahu took the loss, coming across as a leader who can’t control his own party. But the truth is that for him, the defeat was preferable to the alternative. While Gantz and Lapid announced they were freezing the judicial reform negotiations in the president’s residence, the shekel recovered and the protestors stayed home, preserving the tense quiet.

And as far as Netanyahu is concerned, as he told his allies on his sleepless night, what’s needed now is quiet to enable the government to act on the much more importance axis of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Washington. So one could say that for Bibi, Wednesday’s vote was a defeat and victory at one and the same time.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 966)