MK Matan Kahana (National Unity Party) refused on Sunday to define the clashes between Jews and Arabs in the Binyamin region over the weekend as “settler violence”.
Speaking to Israel National News, Kahana said that the acts should be condemned, “but to call them ‘settler violence’? There are over half a million law-abiding Jewish citizens there, the salt of the earth, the best of the best. To call them all ‘settler rioters’ is irrelevant.”
“There is serious terrorism there and the army, the police and the Shin Bet must act decisively against terrorism, and in the same breath I say, under no circumstances should we take the law into our own hands. It’s terrible,” added Kahana.
Kahana also commented on the return of the legislation to amend Israel”s legal system, after he attended on Sunday a discussion in the Knesset’s Constitution Committee on the issue of reasonability.
The MK described it as a sad day, as it symbolizes the abandonment of the discussions at the President’s Residence by the coalition and the abandonment of the attempts to reach a judicial reform based on agreements and consensus. “It is a great shame because reform of this type, which is required in one way or another, must be done through broad consensus, and the coalition announced today that it does not want this consensus,” he said.
MK Kahana does not accept the outline in which the coalition is trying to advance the reasonability issue, saying that the coalition is attempting to pass the reform using the salami technique (using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger action -ed).
“We said that it is necessary to go to the President”s Residence and address things in one package and do it with a broad consensus. Anything else will not be done via consensus and therefore it would not be right to do that,” said Kahana.
“I am convinced that the balance between the three authorities needs to be addressed, but it must be done with broad agreements, because otherwise it creates a major crisis in the nation,” continued Kahana, rejecting the coalition’s accusations that it was his friends in the opposition who ended the talks at the President’s Residence.

“This is absolutely not what happened. It was agreed at the President’s Residence that in the process of the election of the members of the Judicial Selection Committee, an opposition member, Karine Elharrar, would be chosen, and a coalition member that they would name as a candidate would be chosen as well, and then the talks would continue, but the coalition chose to play a trick on the heads of the citizens of Israel and not implement the agreement reached at the President’s Residence, which is why we are in the situation we are in.”
Hebrew video: