Knesset revokes Israel PM’s power to declare war alone

Rasa - The Israeli parliament (Knesset) strikes down a law passed earlier this year, which would enable the regime’s prime minister and minister of military affairs to declare war on their own.

News ID: 438706

Date: 18 July 2018 - 22:38

RNA - The lawmakers on Tuesday rescinded the law, which had cleared the Knesset in late April, with 77 votes to 16.

The legal amendment would allow the duo to forgo a full-cabinet approval before ordering war or a major military operation that could lead to war.

It would enable them to take such decisions in “extreme circumstances,” without specifying those situations.

The clause, which has replaced it, now says that such a decision has to be made “by as wide a panel as possible.”

Lawmaker Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid party hailed Tuesday’s vote, saying that it was “inconceivable that a decision to go to war could be in the hands of one person, without consultation with cabinet members.”

The Israeli regime has a long history of waging wars and occupying sovereign states.

The regime, under hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has escalated its attacks against the Gaza Strip to a scale unprecedented since its last war against the Tel Aviv-blockaded Palestinian territory in 2014.

Tel Aviv has also been conducting sporadic aerial assaults against Syria in what is widely viewed as an attempt to support the terror groups operating against the Damascus government.

According to Press TV, Israel has, meanwhile, been threatening Lebanon with a new military offensive in recent months.

Creeping annexation

Separately, the Knesset approved with 56 votes to 48 a law extending the jurisdiction of Israel’s Administrative Court to the occupied West Bank.

The Jerusalem Post called it the “latest push for de facto annexation” of the Palestinian territory, which Israel occupied back in 1967.

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said, “The Knesset today has made an important statement – the residents of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are indistinguishable from other Israeli citizens.”

Since the occupation, Israel has built hundreds of settlements across the land against the international law, which forbids construction on occupied land.

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