The article argues that if the Supreme Court accepts the legal view now circulating among jurists, it is likely to strike down the Basic Law amendment on the judicial appointments committee as too politicized. In that scenario, the same reasoning could endanger the new law on the police internal investigations unit and later changes concerning the public complaints commissioner for judges. Even if Asher Kula has already been appointed despite opposition inside the legal system, the law itself could still be invalidated later, leaving the broader judicial overhaul a total failure in shifting power between the branches.
Against that backdrop, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit is portrayed as sensing that the Netanyahu coalition may lose the next election, and therefore raising the stakes. The author says Amit assumes Netanyahu will avoid a direct showdown with the High Court now, so the government will limit itself to sharp rhetoric and public criticism before ultimately obeying the ruling. That, the article says, is a rational calculation as long as Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara remains in office, because defying a High Court ruling would be risky when she could issue binding instructions against anyone refusing to comply, from the police commissioner to the civil service commissioner.
The piece then advances an alternative, saying the right response is to shift the debate to which court the state obeys. It highlights Yisrael Beytenu’s proposal to create a separate constitutional court, while leaving the current Judicial Appointments Committee to select regular judges. In this model, elected officials would appoint constitutional judges, an arrangement the article says avoids the High Court’s own criticism of politicization because constitutional courts by nature decide political and constitutional questions.
If the next הכנסת adopts such a model soon after elections, and if Baharav-Miara’s term has ended by then and a less confrontational legal adviser is appointed, the government could transfer constitutional powers from the High Court to the new court, especially the power to strike down laws. The judges would serve fixed terms, such as 10 years, making the court more representative of changing Israeli society. The article says that if the High Court later tried to block the new body, the central question would be which ruling to obey, but it argues the state would likely follow a court created by the public and its elected representatives, avoiding contempt proceedings and a direct institutional clash.
