Appointments Bill Approved Amid Pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office and Fears of a Backfire

The "Appointments Bill," one of the coalition’s most dramatic bills, was approved today, Wednesday, in a preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum.

According to a report by Amiel Yerhi on Wednesday evening on i24NEWS, the bill’s advancement came after intervention and pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Eden Nordan, to move the legislation forward. The prime minister’s new chief of staff pressured Likud lawmakers and ultra-Orthodox Knesset members to approve the "Appointments Bill" in its preliminary reading already this week, and bring it to final approval before the elections.

This is a dramatic bill that would allow, after the elections, the dismissal of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the IDF chief of staff, the heads of the Shin Bet and Mossad, and other senior officials. The "Appointments Bill" was drafted by Nordan himself before he took office. "This is the most important law for the right wing, it will allow us to appoint like in the United States," he told Knesset members.

However, coalition figures are wondering whether it is right to advance a bill that, if Netanyahu loses the elections, would lead to the dismissal of all the recent appointments, such as David Zini, the head of the Shin Bet, and Roman Gofman, the head of the Mossad, who were recently appointed after a grueling legal process.