The Supreme Court of Israel will have, for the first time since its formation in 1948, a Muslim judge permanently. The appointment was announced this Monday (21) by the country’s Ministry of Justice, one of the bodies responsible for participating in the selection of court members.
Judge Khaled Kabub, 63, was born in a city in central Israel and is currently vice president of the Tel Aviv district court; before him, the highest instance of Israeli justice had a Muslim judge in 1999, but on an interim basis. Kabub replaces George Kara, who is an Arab Christian. In Israel, members of the Supreme Court must retire at the age of 70.
According to local media, it is still difficult to establish the profile of the newly appointed, as the judge has spent most of his career dealing with economic crime issues and therefore his constitutional views are less well known. The court is responsible for deciding social issues or matters relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is often criticized for its decisions.
Late last year, for example, the court tried to work out a settlement between Jewish and Palestinian families vying for ownership of houses in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood — inhabited mostly by Arabs but home to a sacred space for Jews. The outcome, however, ended up not being a consensus, with Palestinians refusing the conditions imposed by the court.
In addition to Kabub, three other judges have been appointed to the court, two of whom are conversational. The exchanges should guarantee a turn to the right of the court. That’s because, while most judges are still more progressive, of the four judges who will retire this year, three were considered to be from that wing.
In Israel, the 15 members of the Supreme Court are chosen by a committee made up of nine people, including judges, lawyers, parliamentarians and ministers of state. One of them is the Chief Justice, a position currently held by Gideon Sa’ar, a more conservative profile and a former member of Likud, the party of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
The calculation of the conversations, as pointed out by The Jerusalem Post, is that in 2023 two judges from the liberal wing will retire, making room for the formation of a conservative majority, which has not happened in the country for decades. So far, centre-left parties, some of which are even part of the current government, seem to accept the court’s new configuration, as the nominees, despite being from the far right wing, are not seen as allies of Netanyahu.
The current government is the result of a front formed by eight different parties, ranging from the radical left to the nationalist right. Furthermore, it is the first time in history that an Arab party (the conservative Ra’am) is officially part of the Israeli government. This union was formed with a single objective: to remove the former prime minister from office, seen as authoritarian.
Among the appointments announced this Monday, another also stood out, with regard to the representativeness of the court. For the first time, the highest instance of Israeli Justice will have as a member a woman of Sephardic descent (Jews of Iberian origin who later migrated, for the most part, to Arab countries).
Gila Kanfei-Steinitz, however, is far from being considered an outsider behind the scenes of Israeli power. The magistrate is married to parliamentarian Yuval Steinitz, affiliated with the same party as Netanyahu and who was once part of the former prime minister’s government. Gila is expected to make more conservative decisions in court.
