Education Minister Yoav Kisch (Likud) addressed the government's planned judicial reforms this morning (Sunday), and admitted that with the exception of the reasonableness standard, the coalition has dropped the majority of the planned reforms.
"We made the responsible decision to only promote matters that have a consensus. We made major concessions - the coalition won't have a majority on the judicial selection committee, there will be no Override Clause with a 61-seat majority, and changing the composition of the judicial selection committee is off the agenda," Kisch said in an interview with Galai Tzahal (IDF Radio).
He stated that the attempt to create panic over the limitation of the court's ability to apply the reasonableness standard is pure "demagoguery."
"We are dealing with very simple legislation and it is clear to everyone that this is not the issue. We came up with a significant reform and after [Defense Minister] Gallant's [since retracted] dismissal, this reform stopped. The coalition said it is not continuing with it," he said.
"We went to the talks at the President's Residence until the opposition blew them up, so we decided to only go for things that had a broad consensus, and I can tell you as someone who was in the talks the gaps were small. The reasonableness standard law is not the problem. It is a law to reduce, not cancel, and in any case, there is no reason to fear for Israeli democracy," Kisch said.