The moment of truth: The Knesset votes on reduction of the measure of reasonableness

Seven months after the legal reform was launched, the Knesset is now (Monday) voting on approving the law to change the measure reasonableness in the second and third readings. The vote comes after 26 hours of discussion in the plenum, held at the same time of attempts being made to reach a compromise.

Throughout the night, the communication between the representatives of the coalition and the opposition continued - mediated by the members of the President's House - in a last attempt to postpone the legislation in favor of a comprehensive compromise. The effort is focused on finding a softened version of the measure of reasonableness, in exchange for a commitment to postpone the rest of the legal reform for a long period of at least a year.

However, in the end the contacts failed after the Likud did not agree to embed in legislation the duration of the moratorium on the reform. The head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, said that "it is impossible to reach an agreement with this government. In the last few weeks, we made every effort, but we had conditions - first of all, to preserve Israeli democracy. What they want to do is to dismantle the state, democracy and security with Israel. Therefore, there is no way to continue dealing with them because this is the most irresponsible government that has ever existed."

According to the decision of the Knesset committee, it was decided to activate Article 98, which limits the time of the discussion as well as the number of votes, therefore during the meeting there will be votes on no more than 140 reservations of the law, followed by a vote on the final reading.