Key takeaways:
- Israel’s Supreme Court ruled 10-1 that Aryeh Deri, a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly formed government, cannot serve as minister due to a recent tax evasion conviction.
- The decision was met with immediate backlash from Deri’s Shas party, which is a key component of Netanyahu’s coalition.
- In response to the court ruling, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition vowed to push ahead with controversial measures that would weaken the Supreme Court and its power to strike down legislation.
Today, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that Aryeh Deri, a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly formed government, cannot serve as minister due to a recent tax evasion conviction. The court ruled 10-1 that Deri’s appointment as health and interior minister “could not stand” since it was “extremely unreasonable.”
The decision was met with immediate backlash from Deri’s Shas party, which won 11 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, in November and is a key component of Netanyahu’s coalition. The Sephardi religious party called the court decision “arbitrary and unprecedented” and said it “threw away the voices and votes of 400,000 voters of the Shas movement.”
In response to the court ruling, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition vowed to push ahead with controversial measures that would weaken the Supreme Court and its power to strike down legislation. The coalition has not yet revealed the specifics of these measures, but they are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
The court ruling is a major setback for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who returned to power last month at the head of a coalition with extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties following Israel’s November 1 election. It remains to be seen how the Prime Minister will respond to the court’s decision and how it will affect his coalition’s plans for the future.
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