A joint meeting of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee and National Security Committee began preparing a controversial bill proposal on Monday by Likud MK Moshe Saada, according to which the unit responsible for investigating police officers will become directly subordinate to the justice minister, and will have the power to investigate attorneys as well.
The unit, called the Police Investigations Department (PID) and known in Hebrew as “Machash,” is currently a branch within the State Attorney’s Office. Saada, who in the past served as Deputy PID chief, has argued that the unit suffered from a built-in conflict of interest, as some of the police officers it is required to investigate work closely with the State Attorney’s Office on other matters.
However, opponents of the bill have warned that it would effectively give the justice minister control of an investigative unit that he or she could attempt to weaponize, including by investigating attorneys the minister deemed unfavorable. Rather than solve the conflict-of-interest problem, the law merely created a new, more dangerous one, opponents argued.
The law was first proposed in December 2022 but had not advanced since March 2023. Opponents of the government’s judicial reforms considered the bill a part of them.
According to Saada, who chaired the joint committee meeting, “There are prosecutors who do holy work day and night, but there are also those who exploit their power and authority to become criminals under the protection of the law. Precisely because of the immense power of the prosecution, there must be someone to watch the watchers. Recently, we’ve witnessed cases in which law enforcement trampled on the law. What applies to the police and Shin Bet also applies to the prosecution and the attorney-general,” he said.
'We swore to protect the state'
A representative of the Justice Ministry countered, “There is a constitutional difficulty in advancing a bill whose meaning is placing an investigative and prosecutorial body for police and prosecutors under political control, which could lead to law enforcement being carried out in the service of – and on behalf of – the ruling government.”
Adv. Orit Koren, chair of the Prosecutors’ Association, argued that the bill “transfers criminal enforcement powers from the Israel Police to an unknown future body that will be established somewhere at some point, without proper groundwork or data justifying such a move.”
“We swore to protect the state and uphold the public interest, and we are investigated by the police like any other citizen in this country, without being unfairly targeted out of personal revenge,” Koren said.
Current PID head Keren Bar-Menachem also criticized the law proposal.