The High Court of Justice won't be disqualifying MK Benjamin Netanyahu from returning to serve as prime minister. What the Knesset hasn't done about a prime minister who is under indictment, in the form of an amendment to the Basic Law: The Government, or about a candidate for that office, the High Court justices won't do.
It appeared as if the 11 souls, to whom the severity of the counts against Netanyahu are clear, are having difficulty understanding how the Knesset passed the law that allowed a prime minister to continue serving until his case is decided, while ministers and deputy ministers must resign the moment an indictment is filed against them. But to decide that Netanyahu may not serve, these souls need a legal "anchor," and the ones proposed by the attorneys who appeared before them on Sunday, creative and interesting though they might be, will not be enough.
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What is absurd is that a reasonable person would not want a prime minister who is accused of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust and will need to spend some of his time in court at the expense of managing the affairs of the nation, and who will have conflicting interests that mostly have to do with his ties to the "watchmen" in the system, but the law allows it. This is a clear conflict between the law and what to many people seems obvious for a democratic nation, whose leadership is not above the law.
Does the High Court have the authority to invalidate the opinion of those who will sign off on Netanyahu as their candidate for prime minister just because their signatures are the result of a dubious coalition deal? Can the court reject Netanyahu's candidacy because he took on the job even though by doing so, he hurt public norms? Does the rule that requires cabinet members to resign the moment they are indicted apply to Netanyahu, despite the laws that came later, which exempt the prime minister? Will the court rule that a charge of bribery falls into the same category as treason or murder, and that if either of those charges were in play, the law could not prevent the ouster of the prime minister? It's hard to believe they will.
On the other hand, the respondents' answers to the petitions against Netanyahu, which were largely based on the number of people who voted for the Likud in the last election and the number who voted for Netanyahu's "bloc," apparently also failed to convince the court. After all, the number of voters for the bloc that headed into the election under the "Anyone but Bibi" slogan was bigger, and even if the numbers had been different, the court must not use election results or polls to make decisions about whether candidates are qualified to serve or not.
In contrast to Netanyahu being invalidated as a candidate, which is unlikely, the court intervening in the coalition deal, which reaches new heights of audacity and hedonism and which in my opinion harms the foundations of Israeli democracy, is a much more realistic scenario. Therefore Sunday's discussion was intended to establish the court's right to intervene, but today's panel could actually step in and make changes to the agreement.
At the end of 2000, I appointed a committee, led by Judge Dorit Beinisch, to look into opening court sessions to the electronic media. The committee's favorable recommendations were published only in 2004, and it took a long time before they were implemented, but better late than never. Anyone who is looking for reasons to be patriotic and can find one in the Supreme Court, which is now exposed on screens in every household.
