Government Requests Independent Representation to High Court for Draft Law

By Hamodia Staff

The Israeli government requested Sunday that it be represented independently regarding the Yeshiva draft bill, citing insurmountable differences of opinion between it and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Channel 14 reported.

Secretary of the Government attorney Yossi Fox wrote in a letter to Baharav-Miara that “there is no possibility of bridging the substantial gap between the position of the legal advisor to the government and the government’s position both on the recruitment issue and on the support issue”, and therefore “it is appropriate that in such a far-reaching public issue , in the midst of a war, separate legal representation will be approved in these petitions.”

Such an arrangement was made during the High Court’s hearing of the “reasonability clause” last year, and Fox says that Justice Minister Yariv Levin already petitioned the court for separate representation last week for the draft issue.

Baharav-Miara, who was appointed by the previous administration, gave Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a time limit on how long he and his government had to resolve the draft issue, and warned that all funds to yeshivos would cease on April 1 should he not produce a position that she would agree to represent to the High Court. Netanyahu requested a 30 day extension, citing how consumed the government was with the war effort, but was denied by Baharav-Miara.

The Defense Ministry was instructed to immediately begin drafting yeshiva students, and a first round of letters were sent out last week.

Fox wrote that these decisions of Baharav-Miara were in error. “Your letter, from which it is implied that the security system must act now to recruit the yeshiva students and that in the affidavit to the high court it must present ‘how it acted to implement the law’ – is not in line with the decisions of the high court and excludes from all content the the hearing set by the high court in an expanded composition of 9 judges,” Fox wrote. “The court responded to the prime minister’s request not to make a decision for 30 days to formulate agreements – and therefore the instruction to act now actively for recruitment is contrary to the high court’s decision.”