Justice Minister Yariv Levin and interim High Court Chief Justice Uzi Fogelman will appoint new judges to Shalom, local, and labor courts, they announced on Thursday.
Levin and Fogelman informed the Judicial Selection Committee of their intention and enclosed a list of 12 potential judges that they wanted to appoint as fellow judges in Tel Aviv, Center, South, and Haifa district courts.
The list also included a further two potential judges who will be appointed in the Tel Aviv District Labor Court. These candidates were appointed with the consultation of Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Zur and the national labor court Chief Justice Varda Virt Levana.
The Judicial Selection Committee now has 45 days to submit abnegations to the list of potential appointees.
The new appointments come after Levin had been refusing to convene the Judicial Selection Committee until the Knesset had passed legislation on the part of the judicial reform that changed the committee.
Shortage of Justices
The result is that the High Court is missing two justices after former chief justice Esther Hayut and former Justice Anat Baron retired last month. Without Levin's and Fogelman's new appointments, Israel would have been at a deficiency of more than 50 judges by the end of the year.
Legislation Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman congratulated Levin and Fogelman on the move.
"It's very important that the spirit of cooperation and agreement, which exists among the people and the Knesset, surrounds all of the State of Israel's governing branches," he said."