The nationalist camp should not feel it was defeated in the matter of the splitting of the Attorney General's powers, Attorney Yoram Sheftel told Arutz Sheva. Attorney Yehudah Weinstein, who is being touted by some of the press as the person with the best chances to get the nod for AG, is “as far from the Left as east is from west,” said Sheftel. "He does not share the legal establishment's view that everything is justiciable," he said.
In any case, he assured listeners, the government would make sure not to select a ultra-leftist AG from the legal establishment like the current AG, Menachem Mazuz.
Although Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that the AG's powers would not be split for now, Sheftel there was no reason for disappointment. “This matter of splitting the powers still has not been taken off the agenda,” he said. “All Netanyahu did was to assume that the Attorney General who will be selected will begin his job with the same powers as his predecessor, but he still has not forsaken the idea.”
PM avoiding confrontation
The fact that Justice Minister Yaakov Ne'eman, who favored the splitting of the AG's powers between a Legal Adviser to the Government and a Chief Prosecutor, did not directly challenge Netanyahu's decision “proves that Netanyahu also wants the split, Sheftel maintained. “Is seems that at this stage he apparently does not want to get into a confrontation with Defense Minister Ehud Barak. At this stage he apparently prefers to concentrate on selecting an Attorney General to his liking.”
Although Noam Solberg – a candidate preferred by some nationalist politicians – is not mentioned among the current list of candidates, Sheftel said that the legal establishment, too, failed to advance its preferred candidates, Daphna Barak and Yedidya Stern. The government, he explained, made sure to put two people with nationalist outlooks in the search committee for candidates for Attorney General, and these two prevented the nomination of the legal establishment's favorites.