June 19 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has urged the coalition and the opposition parties to resume dialogue on judicial reform after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he will unilaterally promote different aspects of the controversial measure.
“I have always believed, and today more than ever, that dialogue is the best solution for the State of Israel. I reiterate my call to show national responsibility and continue the fruitful and substantive dialogue that has taken place in recent months,” he said. indicated, according to the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
Herzog has assured that, although there have been “internal discussions”, an agenda has not been specified to discuss the judicial reform again. While Netanyahu has announced that he will not have the opposition, the opposition leaders have withdrawn from the negotiations, further assuring that there was no prior agreement.
“There are no agreements and there were none,” opposition leader Yair Lapid stressed, adding that the only reason why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put judicial reform back on the table is because he “lost the control of his coalition.”
This comes after Netanyahu announced on Sunday his decision to push forward the process unilaterally after the breakdown of talks with the opposition, which criticized him for his attempts to delay the call to elect the second member of the Judicial Appointments Committee, in charge of to choose the judges.
The body is made up of two ministers, two parliamentarians, three Supreme Court judges and two representatives of the Bar Association. A vote on Wednesday validated an opposition candidate as a member of the committee, which was one of the conditions requested by the opposition to resume negotiations on judicial reform.
However, another of the candidates was rejected and the election will be delayed for at least a month. The opposition thus criticized Netanyahu’s attempts to delay the call, after which he decided to withdraw from the negotiations on the reform.
Israel has lived through months of continuous protests against the judicial reform promoted by Netanyahu, whose objective is to give control of the Judicial Appointments Committee to the government party or coalition, which could also order the dismissal of judges in all courts, since the aforementioned body it has the authority to do so, without the need for a consensus with the representatives of the judicial apparatus.
