
MK Matan Kahana (National Unity), Talking to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News, discussed the Supreme Court hearing to overturn the amendment to minimize the reasonableness standard, saying that he feels some sadness "because the Prime Minister could have stopped the process from reaching a point where the Supreme Court is forced to decide on such a controversial issue, claiming that the role of the political echelon is to reach broad agreements on such issues.”
Kahana emphasized that the Prime Minister is supposed to lead moves to reach such agreements, but unfortunately, this has not been done. "The conduct of the coalition regarding the judicial reform was completely wrong, and unfortunately, we might find that this is a missed historic opportunity to finally fix what needs to be fixed in the balance between the governmental authorities.”
From my personal experience as the Minister of Religious Services, I can say that I devised a conversion reform plan that was completely supported by Rabbi Chaim Druckman OBM, and the law was actually written together with Rabbi Druckman OBM, but I understood that if I passed the law unilaterally, it would not work and would cause divisions and rifts within the halachic Judaism stream.” “Therefore," says MK Kahana, "I strived to obtain broad consensus on this legislation. The same applies to the issue of the judicial reform.”
It is clear that judicial reform is needed to settle the balance between the authorities, but it would be good if the coalition did it in an agreed-upon manner. Even if not all of its goals were realized, we would have ended the process with a judicial system and without division and polarization between the people, and suffering tremendous security and economic damage.”
Regarding the argument that Basic Laws should not be touched, MK Kahana says that he, too, is not enthusiastic about the court's intervention in Basic Laws, but "there are still no regulations concerning a Basic Law in Israel, and as long as there is no legislative Basic Law, it should be clear that the court has the last word. This is a statement that may be a little complicated, but it is also quite simple: I am not happy about the fact that the court can touch Basic Laws, but on the other hand, it is absolutely clear that we have to obey a court ruling."
Kahana concludes, "National Unity, unlike other opposition parties, very much wants to reach an outline for judicial reform that will have a wide consensus. After we received the outline from the president last Sunday, we agreed that there is something to talk about and we are headed in the right direction. But immediately after that, Netanyahu did not support it, Levin said it was unacceptable to him, and the extremists Smotrich and Ben-Gvir announced that they planned to oppose it. So we no longer had anyone to talk to. No one supported this document. Yesterday, we finally heard the prime minister say that if he reaches an understanding, this is what will happen, and he doesn't care what Ben-Gvir and Smotrich will say. But he still has not supported any outline. That hasn't happened yet."