The flip-flop of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the migrant agreement with the United Nations continues to send shock waves through Israeli politics. Perhaps in the end it will turn out that the decisions made by Netanyahu regarding illegal African immigrants — and the agreement's immediate cancellation — was actually a plan meant to advance the “notwithstanding clause,” an addition to one of the Basic Laws, which would allow the Knesset to override High Court of Justice decisions that nullify or limit laws passed by the parliament. 

Netanyahu justified the agreement with the UN on April 2, according to which 16,000 of the 37,000 migrants would be absorbed in a Western country, in part by saying that the High Court had prevented the government from advancing other solutions that include prolonged incarceration and forced deportation of anyone who is not interested in leaving Israel of his own accord. 

The next day, when Netanyahu announced the cancellation of the agreement under pressure from the right, he returned to the same solutions rejected by the High Court, by means of an attempt to bypass judicial intervention through a notwithstanding, or override, clause. Netanyahu called for the reintroduction of legislation that would enable the forcing out of illegal migrants against their will after the High Court, with an interim March 15 injunction, stopped agreements with Rwanda to absorb some of the migrants. (Senior Rwandan officials denied that such an agreement was signed with Israel.)

The person who had prevented the passage of a notwithstanding clause is Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, chairman of Kulanu, who declared more than once that he would prevent damage to the judiciary, and that “there’s no state without a strong rule of law.” Thus, this week Netanyahu passed the hot potato to the finance minister. Kahlon, who criticized the agreement with the UN from the start, was pushed into a corner because he did not want to be seen as the one preventing a solution to the problem of the asylum-seekers. His response to the prime minister was positive: He would support a notwithstanding clause as long as it only deals with the Deportation Law.