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Israel Parliament restricts ability to declare prime minister incompetent – JURIST

The Israeli Parliament (Knesset) Thursday passed the first of many controversial judicial reform laws. The law amends Israel’s Basic Law, raising the threshold at which the government can declare the prime minister incapacitated.The ability to declare the prime minister incapacitated has now been bestowed solely on the prime minister himself, or from a supermajority of the cabinet. The amendment also narrows the definition of incapacitated to be strictly mental or physical.According to various opposition members, Chief Justice Esther Hayut and Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, this law is one in a series of personal laws meant to prevent an ouster of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to local news outlets, Miara wrote a letter to Netanyahu in February, telling him that he should not participate in judicial reforms due to his conflict of interest. The Attorney General claims that because Netanyahu faces corruption trials in the Jerusalem District Court, his interference with the judiciary should be forbidden.In response, former Deputy Prime Minister Benny Gantz called for a continuation of the mass anti-reform protests that have persisted in Israel for eleven straight weeks, stressing that non-violent protest could prevent more of these reforms from passage.