The Knesset asked the High Court of Justice on Sunday to allow five frozen budget transfers to proceed, arguing that Speaker Amir Ohana acted within his authority when he approved a Finance Committee meeting during the election recess.
The court is due to hear the petition on Tuesday, with hundreds of millions of shekels in disputed allocations still on hold. The case could also determine how far the Knesset speaker may go in authorizing parliamentary business after the usual coalition-opposition mechanism for approving recess meetings has rejected it.
Justice Alex Stein temporarily halted nearly all the transfers on August 5, citing apparent problems with the way the committee had been convened. He allowed one allocation concerning civilian emergency expenses to proceed and referred the case to a three-justice panel.
The temporary order did not determine whether the meeting or the transfers were unlawful. It will remain in place unless the court lifts or changes it.
The Hiddush religious-freedom organization and Democrats MK Naama Lazimi filed the petition. They argue that the August 4 meeting breached special restrictions governing the Knesset during the election recess and allowed the coalition to approve politically sensitive spending less than three months before the October 27 election.
The Knesset’s central response is that its rules provide two separate ways to convene committees during a recess.
Under the ordinary route, meetings require approval from a Coordination Committee representing both the coalition and opposition. A separate provision allows the speaker to authorize additional meetings in “special cases” at the request of the government, the committee chairman, or one-third of its members.
Knesset: House Committee decision cannot cancel speaker’s authority
The Knesset argued that the second route remains available even when the Coordination Committee has refused approval. It said a decision adopted by the House Committee for the election recess could not cancel authority expressly granted to the speaker.
The dispute began after the Knesset entered its election recess on July 18. The recess is due to continue until the next Knesset is sworn in following the October election.
The House Committee had approved rules allowing the Finance Committee to hold one meeting concerning budget transfers during the first two weeks of the recess. Meetings generally required four days’ notice, although the speaker could shorten that period in urgent and exceptional circumstances.
The Finance Committee held the permitted meeting on July 29. According to the Knesset’s response, 33 budget requests had been published before the meeting. The committee considered 23 by the time the sitting ended at 7:30 p.m. and approved 22.
Finance Committee chairman MK Hanoch Milwidsky subsequently sought another meeting to consider 13 requests that had not been addressed, along with three requests for reconsideration.
Government ministries were asked to explain which transfers were urgent. The government ultimately prioritized six, and the Knesset’s legal advisers concluded that those six could be discussed because of their stated importance and urgency.
The Coordination Committee did not approve another meeting after opposition coordinator MK Merav Ben-Ari objected. Milwidsky then asked Ohana to authorize it through the separate “special cases” provision.
Ohana accepted the legal advisers’ position that the six transfers justified another meeting. He also shortened the required notice period from four days to three, despite the Knesset legal adviser’s position that no reason had been given for departing from the four-day rule.
All requests approved by Finance Committee despite objections
The Finance Committee convened on August 4 and approved all six requests. Opposition lawmakers argued at the meeting that it had been unlawfully called and that some of the spending was inconsistent with the restraint expected during an election campaign.
The allocations covered a broad range of spending and internal budget changes. The Knesset said the ministries had identified needs including defense expenditure, preparations for the school year, salaries, payments to suppliers, summer education programs, and preventing the shutdown of the rabbinical courts’ computer systems.
The requests also included coalition funds for religious and haredi education and programs connected to the National Missions Ministry. One Education Ministry request included approximately NIS 268 million in coalition allocations. Other requests included NIS 125 million for the National Missions Ministry and about NIS 78 million for the Religious Services Ministry.
The Knesset said all six requests had completed the government approval process, including review by government legal advisers, before reaching the committee. It argued that claims concerning improper government spending should be directed principally at the government, rather than used to invalidate the parliamentary meeting.
It also said approval by the Finance Committee only makes funding available and does not independently authorize a government program or permit unlawful expenditure.
The Knesset further argued that the present government is not formally a caretaker government because it has not resigned, lost a no-confidence vote, or been replaced following an election. Restrictions developed by the court for caretaker governments therefore cannot simply be applied to the Knesset’s internal work, it said.
Ohana’s use of the provision was not unprecedented, according to the response. The Knesset said the speaker authorized three Finance Committee meetings during the 2022 election recess after the Coordination Committee declined to approve them. Some of those meetings also concerned coalition funds.
The Knesset concluded that courts intervene only rarely in the internal management of parliamentary proceedings and that no defect in this case justified overturning the committee’s decisions.
It asked the court to dismiss the petition and lift the order. The petitioners will argue on Tuesday that the August meeting bypassed safeguards intended to prevent the governing coalition from using public funds without sufficient opposition oversight during an election campaign.
