The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee resumed discussions Sunday on a bill that would divide the position of Israel’s Attorney General, which currently combines two major roles: serving as the government’s legal adviser and overseeing the state prosecution system.
The session was marked by a heated exchange of accusations, as the committee’s legal adviser, attorney Dr. Gur Bligh, presented an official opinion opposing the proposed legislation. Bligh warned that separating the roles would fundamentally weaken the Attorney General’s ability to function as an independent mechanism of legal oversight within the government.
“The proposed fundamental change in the nature of the Attorney General’s role will significantly undermine the office’s ability to serve as a body that carries out internal legal oversight within the executive branch. The combination of the arrangements turns the Attorney General into a kind of ‘trustee position’ - a sort of private attorney for the government, while the existing concept of the Attorney General as an independent and impartial body is erased," he said.
Bligh compared the proposed reform to altering a structure without replacing the safeguards that support it. “There is no sanctity in the current arrangement, but in Israel the system developed in this way and many checks and balances were derived from it," he said. “The idea that one can simply change the structure without creating new balancing mechanisms is the greatest difficulty. It is like a table you want to fix where instead of shortening one of its four legs, you remove one leg entirely. The table falls."
He warned that the change could lead to greater harm to citizens’ rights and weaken the principle that the rule of law applies not only to the public but also to government authorities.
Coalition lawmakers supporting the bill rejected the criticism, arguing that the reform is necessary to prevent what they described as an excessive concentration of power in the Attorney General’s office. Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman strongly criticized the current structure of the institution, describing it as a system that grants the Attorney General excessive authority.
“The Attorney General is like Louis XIV, a lawless despot and a ruler with unlimited power. This is a position with unchecked authority that must be split," Rothman said, citing previous comments by legal scholars, including Prof. Amnon Rubinstein.
“Conflicts of interest work in all directions. The bill restores the basic idea that an adviser advises, while the government may decide whether to follow that advice. This law was not born because of Gali Baharav-Miara. I worked on and promoted it even when I was in the opposition and outside the Knesset. The split is simply the right way to run a country."
Rothman added that elected officials should not be subordinate to a body that, in his view, claims exclusive authority to define the public interest.
“The people elect the Knesset and the government to manage the State of Israel," he said. “We do not believe that the state and its elected officials can be subject to a body that tells itself it knows what the public interest is."