Coalition seeks to fast-track 2 key bills through committee, bypassing legal review

Marathon committee sessions expedite bills to split AG’s role and overhaul media before expected Knesset dissolution and early elections, despite legal adviser’s opposition

The coalition is launching a legislative blitz in a race to advance controversial judicial and media overhaul bills before the expected proceedings to dissolve the Knesset and trigger early elections begin next week. The moves are prompting accusations from opposition lawmakers and legal advisers that the coalition is bypassing legal oversight and parliamentary procedure to rush through major constitutional changes.

Two of the coalition’s most controversial pieces of legislation being debated this week are the bill to split the role of the attorney general at the Knesset Constitution Committee and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s media overhaul legislation, being debated by a special committee.

The two committees are conducting marathon deliberations from Sunday through Tuesday, with the hope of advancing legislation to the plenum next week before a preliminary vote to dissolve the Knesset is expected to be held.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition submitted legislation on Wednesday to dissolve parliament and trigger elections — competing with opposition parties that had submitted their own bills for dissolution — to control the process and timing of elections. They came a day after the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah faction announced it would back dissolving the Knesset due to the coalition’s failure to pass a draft exemption law for yeshiva students.

A preliminary vote on the legislation could take place as early as Monday, and then it could be swiftly rushed through the legislative process. Elections must be held within five months of the vote passing, with Haredi parties reportedly favoring an election date in early September. Elections must, in any case, be held by October 27.

Passing just a preliminary reading of the dissolution bill may still complicate the coalition’s legislative agenda for the remainder of the Knesset term, causing a sense of urgency to pass as much legislation as quickly as possible.

The tensions surrounding the coalition’s legislative push erupted into open confrontation Sunday in the Knesset special committee debating Karhi’s sweeping media overhaul bill, where opposition lawmakers and the committee’s legal advisers accused coalition lawmakers of trying to push major last-minute revisions through without adequate legal review.

The legislation, which requires two more votes before it can be passed into law, would give the government significant control over broadcast media, news sites and other media by establishing a new regulatory council, a majority of whose members would be installed by the communications minister.

It has drawn sharp opposition from both the committee’s professional legal staff and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who have warned that the current draft undermines press freedom and allows for political meddling in media.

Opposition lawmakers said they received a new 178-page draft of the legislation only hours before the start of Shabbat on Friday, leaving little time to review extensive last-minute changes before the discussions resumed Sunday morning.

“You tried to drop an entirely new draft on us that we had never seen before, without any legal oversight whatsoever,” Yesh Atid MK Shelly Tal Meron told committee chair Likud MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan, alleging that entirely new provisions were added to, among other things, benefit the pro-government Channel 14 news outlet.

Committee legal adviser Pinchas Grot warned that the coalition had introduced major new clauses and revisions to the legislation at the last minute while deliberately accelerating the bill ahead of possible elections, despite repeated objections from the committee’s legal advisory team.

“The pace, which does not allow for proper study, is an inherent problem,” Grot said, adding ominously that “once the law passes, I don’t know what the next Knesset will look like.”

Justice Ministry representative Adi Liberos said the Communications Ministry had ignored concerns for months and accused ministry staffers of drafting legislative provisions despite “lacking the authority or professional qualifications” to perform legal advisory functions, calling the situation “an unprecedented systemic failure.”

The committee’s conduct has been consistently criticized by opposition lawmakers and the Knesset legal staff, who have accused Distel-Atbaryan of bypassing parliamentary procedure, curtailing debate, mistreating legal advisers and disregarding professional legal advice to accelerate the legislation.

Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik, in April, called for the legislation to be transferred from the special committee created to advance it back to the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee, warning that the current proceedings no longer meet the basic requirements of a proper legislative process.

Distel-Atbaryan has consistently rebuffed criticism from both opposition lawmakers and the committee’s legal staff, accusing the latter, without evidence, of deliberately trying to stall the legislation after they raised objections to the bill.

Clash over weakening AG’s role

Similar confrontations erupted Sunday in the Knesset Constitution Committee, where opposition lawmakers walked out of a heated session in protest after the committee chairman, Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, had Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz removed during deliberations on a controversial bill to split the role of the attorney general.

The legislation, which has only passed a preliminary plenum reading, would split the attorney general’s role into three separate positions, effectively depriving the position of all authority and independence, in a move critics say is intended to weaken the office’s authority and independence and remove a major check on government power, including during upcoming elections.

Multiple opposition MKs objected during the meeting to advancing such a major constitutional change while the Knesset appears headed toward dissolution, with Segalovitz asking the committee’s legal adviser for “a written legal opinion on whether the legislation can continue to advance through second and third readings during dissolution proceedings.”

After Segalovitz kept pressing the issue, Rothman, who opened the meeting by declaring that “this week we will vote on [the bill] in its first reading, God willing,” silenced the lawmaker and ordered him removed from the room, prompting shouting and a walkout by other opposition committee members.

Yesh Atid MK Karin Elharrar denounced what she called “a fundamentally flawed process to pass amendments to a Basic Law within minutes, without allowing for a genuine professional discussion.”

Opposition lawmakers also accused the coalition of intentionally rushing through the legislative process to advance legally vulnerable legislation so that any future intervention by the High Court of Justice can later be used to fuel political attacks on the judiciary during election campaigns.

“The goal is clear: to do everything possible so that the process is ultimately struck down, in order to continue the campaign and blame the court,” Elharrar said.