Knesset Considers Repealing Rotation Government Option – News from Israel

A bill to abolish the possibility of “rotation governments” is set to pass its first reading in the Knesset plenary on Monday with bipartisan support, marking a rare agreement on a constitutional amendment between the coalition and the opposition.

The aforementioned legislation is part of the Fundamental Law: Government and provided the legal basis for both the Netanyahu-Gantz COVID-19 emergency government in 2020 and the Lapid-Bennett government in 2021-2022. Its aim was to create a “two-headed” government with a prime minister and a “deputy prime minister” who rotated mid-term.

Each prime minister has exactly half the votes in the cabinet of ministers and government committees, which gives him the right to veto all government decisions.

The bill was quickly passed in the Knesset in 2020 as part of negotiations between Gantz and Netanyahu. Politicians and civil society organizations at the time and since have criticized the fact that the bill was a constitutional amendment with significant consequences that was passed hastily and for immediate political purposes.

The opposition in the Lapid-Bennett government took particular issue with the rotation government option, arguing that it was what enabled Bennett to serve as prime minister after winning just seven seats out of 120 (and joining the government with just six).

The bill to nullify the amendment, which is technically a series of similar bills combined into one, marks a rare agreement between the coalition and the opposition on a constitutional issue, especially after the controversial judicial reforms introduced by the government in 2023.

One of the main advocates of the reform was the chairman of the Knesset’s Constitutional Committee, MP Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party). He was one of the sponsors of Monday’s bill to overturn the rotation government, alongside staunch opponents of the judicial reform, such as Democratic MP Efrat Rayten.

Distorting Incentives for Elected Officials

According to the explanatory section of the bill, which Rayten proposed with Yesh Atid MK Karin Elharrar, the rotational government “distorts the political considerations and motivations of elected officials, blurs the hierarchy within the government, harms the status of the prime minister, and enables the exploitation of the relative power of politicians who did not win a majority of the public vote. Ultimately, this leads to harm to the work of the government and society,” Rayten and Elharrar wrote.

The plenum was convened on Monday, even though the Knesset was officially in recess, at the request of both the government and the opposition. During the recess, the plenum can convene for specific purposes after special procedures and approval by the Knesset Speaker.