For years, relations have been tense between veteran chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee David Rotem of Yisrael Beitenu Party, and the Arab Knesset members. Periodically, this charged relationship becomes heated and the arguments become high-pitched. Rotem, resident of the Efrat settlement in the Judea area, believes that the Arab Knesset members are leading double lives: On the one hand, they are citizens of the State of Israel and members of its parliament, while on the other hand they are emissaries of the Palestinians and their positions.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, chairman of his party, has also often expressed this stance in recent years. For Liberman, Rotem is an important vehicle for realizing the party’s ideological agenda via one of the most important committees of the Knesset. This is Rotem’s second consecutive term of office as head of the committee.

The governability bill, designed to strengthen the government and its prime minister, is viewed by Rotem as the crowning glory and apex of his work in the committee. This same bill also puts him on a collision course with the Arab Knesset members. They claim that one of the bill’s clauses raising the Knesset’s electoral threshold from 2 to 3.25% of the votes, is intended solely to harm representation of the Arab public in the Knesset, and them personally.

The bill passed its first reading last July, and Rotem is preparing to complete the legislation in the coming weeks; this itself raises the tension level in the discussions. Alongside the ultra-Orthodox draft law, the governability bill is one of the flagship laws of the current coalition. Its objectives are to heighten the government’s ability to govern and limit parliamentary means of toppling the government, such as via no-confidence votes. The extent of its importance for the coalition structure and the far-reaching changes it encompasses, might be matched by a similarly harsh and dramatic confrontation.