Ramallah: In what critics have described as a sure sign of the decline of democracy in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to have the right to veto proposed bills, thus preventing them from being voted on in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

In recent years, the role of the 120-member Knesset in voting on bills has been curtailed by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation, whose members are drawn from the coalition factions alone and decide whether the coalition will support a bill.

It is rare for members of the Knesset to be given the choice to vote according to their conscience on bills put to the vote. Coalition members in the Knesset support whatever bills they are instructed to vote for.

This practice will now be further constrained with the prime minister holding the right to decide which bills will come before the Ministerial Committee on Legislation, a right he will exercise through his representative on the committee, Yariv Levin. In other words, the bills that Netanyahu vetoes will not be submitted to the Knesset for the members to decide.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz earlier this week quoted Kneset member Dov Khenin of the Joint Arab List speaking out against the move. “Are we for autocracy,” Khenin asked. “When the prime minister finds he is in the minority, he can veto a bill and prevent it from moving ahead, which is completely unacceptable in the democratic concept and the form of government we know.”

Levin, the tourism minister and public security minister, told Haaretz that the use of the veto would be very rare.

Haaretz cited Likud sources as saying that the prime minister had insisted on the veto power due to the concern that the chairwoman of the committee, Ayelet Shaked, would attempt to use the committee to ensure that the demands of her own radical faction, Habayit Hayehudi, got to the Knesset.

The Haaretz summed up that it will become difficult for Israelis to know when Netanyahu has used his veto since the Ministerial Committee on Legislation does not keep minutes of its meetings. In addition, the decisions of the committee are made via negotiations and deals between factions rather than by voting in the committee.

A Likud source told Haaretz: “The nature of the committee is that the votes are made in quiet deals. Transparency would only make it difficult to form alliances and move things ahead quietly.”