The High Court of Justice has acted to lift the curtain of secrecy from the political deal-making that takes place in the process of forming governing coalitions.
It issued a show-cause order Thursday instructing the major political parties to publicly disclose the details of their agreements with the smaller parties.
The order was requested by four citizen groups, which suspect the secrecy surrounding the agreements may conceal illegalities.
It was addressed specifically to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud bloc, and Labor Party leader Shimon Peres.
The court also demanded disclosure from the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party and six individual Knesset members.
The individual Knesset members under court order include five who quit Likud last month to form a separate Knesset faction.
Four of them returned to the fold this week after making deals with Shamir. The fifth, Avraham Sharir, shifted to Labor after reaching an agreement with Peres.
The sixth Knesset member served with a disclosure order is Charlie Biton, who was ousted from the Communist Party Knesset faction for refusing to obey a rotation rule. He now sits as an independent member.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
