Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that Foreign Ministry Director-General Eden Bar-Tal will also serve as interim Civil Service Commissioner (CSC) for one month. The announcement came a day after a High Court ruling that the prime minister must appoint a permanent CSC via a competitive procedure.
Bar-Tal has de facto fulfilled the position since the end of the previous interim CSC Roi Kachlon’s three-month tenure in April. However, the legality of the new interim appointment is unclear in the wake of the High Court ruling, and will likely be challenged in court.
The CSC is the official supervisor of the state’s tens of thousands of workers in the public sector. Its authorities include chairing a large number of appointment and firing committees for various high-level positions; approving government requests to recruit employees without a tender; implementing government policy regarding the public sector, and more.
The issue of the appointment of the new CSC has been especially sensitive in recent months, due to the government’s attempts to fire two high-level officials – Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, who has announced recently that he will step down of his own accord on June 15.
While the CSC is involved in appointing many high-ranking public sector jobs, the method of appointing the CSC itself is not laid out in law. The law merely says that the CSC is appointed by the government in a process that is exempt from a tender. A previous government decision in 2018 said that a permanent appointment method must be determined, and the attorney-general must be consulted on the matter.
Netanyahu, however, rejected the AG’s proposal, which was for an independent selection committee, and instead attempted to pass a government measure giving him the power to choose the candidate. At first, the prime minister proposed that the candidate of his choice then be vetted merely for his or her integrity, but he later amended the proposal such that a new ad-hoc vetting committee would examine both the candidate’s integrity and his or her professional qualifications.
Prime minister's proposal unlawful, according to majority opinion
The majority opinion in the 2-1 ruling on Monday was that the prime minister’s proposal was unlawful, since it did not include “sufficient guarantees for maintaining the independent, state-oriented, and non-political nature of the role or for selecting the most professionally suitable candidate,” according to a summary of the ruling published by the court’s spokesperson.
“Furthermore, the majority opinion determined that there is no longer room for the practice in which the political echelon decides and modifies the appointment mechanism at its discretion, based on considerations that are not transparent to the public," the summary read.
The minority opinion, penned by Deputy Chief Justice Noam Solberg, argued that "it is very difficult to determine that there is a legal obligation to appoint the commissioner through a competitive process, as the law explicitly exempts it from the requirement of a competitive tender,” according to the summary.
According to Solberg, “Given that the legislator chose to remove the tender—that is, the competitive appointment process—'through the door,' there is no room to reintroduce it 'through the window' via judicial review of administrative discretion,” the summary read.
In a statement accompanying the announcement of Bar-Tal’s appointment attributed to the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu criticized the High Court ruling and said he would support bill proposals to codify his proposal for the CSC appointment method in law, thus overcoming the ruling.
"For the past year, in the midst of a multi-front war, the government has been trying to appoint a permanent Civil Service Commissioner in the same manner as previous commissioners were appointed—but the Attorney General, backed by the Supreme Court, has blocked this effort,” the prime minister argued.
He then echoed arguments made in Solberg’s dissenting opinion.
“Now, the Supreme Court is taking an even further step. It is acting as a legislative authority, overturning its own previous ruling, and interpreting the law in complete contradiction to its wording and the intention of the legislator (the law explicitly states that 'the tender requirement shall not apply'),” the statement read.
“The government will support the legislative proposals submitted yesterday, which are intended to restore the previous state of affairs, as explicitly determined by the legislator, and to end the disruption to the civil service,” the statement read.