Speaker refuses Knesset conference to mark 50 years of ‘occupation’
MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint List) asks to reserve a Knesset room to hold a ‘conference to mark the occupation’; Yuli Edelstein decides, in an unusual step, to intervene and refuse her request.
In an unusual move, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) prevented a Joint List MK from holding a conference in the Knesset to mark the 50th anniversary of the Israeli “occupation.”
A few days ago, MK Aida Touma-Sliman’s office emailed the Knesset’s visitors’ center’s reservation department and asked to reserve the Sprinzak Hall for a conference. This was ostensibly a routine procedure: Any Knesset member can reserve a hall for a conference they’re hosting.
However, a crucial detail of this email brought the matter to the attention of the parliament’s speaker: Touma-Sliman’s aide wrote, “The meeting is to mark the 50th anniversary of the occupation of ‘67.”
When Edelstein learnt of the conference’s purpose, he decided to intervene in the process and refuse Touma-Sliman’s request. “It has come to my attention that you have requested that a conference be held in the Sprinzak Hall entitled ‘Fifty Years since the Occupation of ‘67,’ Edelstein wrote in a letter to Touma-Sliman, a Christian Arab who lives in Acre.
He continued, “I was saddened by this defiant initiative, which brings unnecessary division and tension between parts of the nation, especially in this sensitive and special period in the Israeli calendar, the character of which you must know very well.”
The speaker added a personal note, writing, “The attempt to celebrate ‘the occupation’ specifically within the Knesset is not only an insult to a broad public in Israel, but also a personal insult to me.”
He concluded unequivocally: “You may hold the meeting in your faction’s room or in your office, but not in an official Knesset hall.”
It is unusual for the Knesset’s speaker to intervene in MKs’ use of the parliament’s various halls, even for events that are disapproved of by some of the parliamentarians. Two months ago, a day to mark LGBT rights was held, which is disapproved of by many of the religious MKs. Some of them asked Edelstein to intervene, but he refused.
A month ago, MK Dr. Aliza Lavie held a conference on sperm donation in the Sprinzak Hall and aroused opposition. At the beginning of June, a major event is scheduled to be produced by the Land of Israel caucus in the Knesset to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War Days and settlements in the West Bank.
(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
