Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Wednesday lambasted the High Court of Justice's decision to overturn his appointment of a senior aide. He added that if such intervention in internal ministry affairs continues, it may be necessary to limit the court's powers by law.

Dichter had appointed police Brigadier General Bentzi Sau as the head of his operational staff, even though the Or Commission - a state commission of inquiry that investigated the deaths of 13 Arabs, apparently from police fire, in the October 2000 riots - had ruled that Sau should be denied promotion for seven years. In the past, this post has entailed promotion to major general, but Dichter says he had decided to reduce the rank attached to the post even before selecting Sau, and therefore, it in fact entailed no promotion.

"I was disappointed by the court's decision," Dichter said Wednesday. "Both I and my ministry's legal staff believed this was not a promotion, but rather a lateral transfer. How can any intelligent person say that an officer who had served as second-in-command of the Border Police, the chief of staff, and who then moves to a staff position at the Public Security Ministry, has been promoted?

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"This is a dangerous intrusion of the judicial branch into the executive branch's decisions. It is excessive judicial activism... If we see that the High Court is getting too deeply involved in executive branch decisions, we might well introduce legislation that would restrict the judicial branch in such matters," Dichter continued, adding that he might well sponsor such legislation himself.

"The High Court should have discussed the reasonability of the appointment, not the question of whether or not it was a promotion," Dichter argued, stressing he did not know Sau at the time he decided to appoint him.

The court decided to overturn Sau's appointment in a split decision on
Tuesday, with Justices Ayala Procaccia and Salim Joubran in the majority and Elyakim Rubinstein dissenting. The ruling, issued in response to a petition by the families of those killed in the riots and Adalah  the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, was primarily based on the fact that the cabinet at the time voted to adopt the Or Commission's
recommendations.

The precedent-setting decision essentially implies that the findings of a commission of inquiry, once adopted by any government, become binding on subsequent governments. As Procaccia wrote, the commission's recommendations, once adopted, become "part of government policy," and "it is possible to exercise judicial review over violations of government policy using the rules of public law."

Rubinstein, in his dissent, said that he did not consider the appointment sufficiently unreasonable to warrant court intervention, even though it would have been better, out of respect for both the commission's recommendations and the Arab public's feelings, had Dichter not made it.