Prof. Yuval Elbashan, Dean of the multicultural campuses at the Ono Academic College, urges his opponent Minister Yariv Levin, in a column published on the Ynet website, to give up his ambition to abolish the seniority system by appointing the president of the Supreme Court and to reach a compromise regarding the candidate who will be approved by the Minister of Justice.
"Judge Amit should be asked to surrender the presidency, as did his predecessor, Judge Uzi Vogelman. Seniority will pass onto Judge Noam Sohlberg, who will be appointed president. This way, the judges will accept the continuation of the principle of seniority and will enable the unanimous election of the president, who would have been appointed at a later stage anyway," suggests Elbashan.
He believes that, "On the other hand, Levin will not accept President Amit, and yesterday hastened to announce that he would be dismissed from the position, because he would be 'a president who was illegally appointed by his friends, and who is not legal in the eyes of the public at large.' Even though Sohlberg, who was tagged at the time of his appointment as a conservative, is currently perceived by the supporters of the Reform as too systematic, because he aligned his opinions with the other judges due to activist rulings he gave (such as the cancellation of the multi-apartment tax law), but it will be difficult for Levin to object to him as well, after the disqualification of Amit, and what's more, he belongs to the Right wing and is religious."
In order for this to happen," he states, "everyone has to give up on something, mainly - Judge Amit and Minister Levin. This is not a trivial matter, but now there are much more important things: the unity of the people during a war of survival, when the enemy has long since breached the gate. The country will no longer tolerate constitutional chaos, especially when there are those from the outside and inside who will take advantage of this situation to deepen the rifts and bring about our absolute loss. We can hope that Sohlberg will also agree to this, because of the emergency of the situation. If he wants, he can limit his presidency to the original period of time he was supposed to serve and pass the torch to Judge Barak-Erez, who is next in line for seniority."
Elbashan warns that "if this proposal is not accepted, we will continue on the current collision course. It will indeed make the barn-burners happy, as yesterday they already started preparing their torches, but it will lead to the destruction of several more oranges, from the few that are still left in our common orchard. We can no longer permit that."