The Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday banned the leader of the right-wing Shas party from holding any ministerial portfolio in the government, after convicting him of criminal charges.
A spokesman for the court said that it had accepted, by a majority of 10 judges, the appeal to prevent the appointment of Aryeh Makhlouf Deri, leader of the Shas party, as interior minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, due to his recent conviction in a criminal case.
The Supreme Court confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to appoint Aryeh Deri, head of the Shas party, as a minister "involves an extreme lack of reasonableness," and that Netanyahu should remove him from office.
In its first comment on the ruling, the Shas party said in a statement, "The Supreme Court, which claims to care about minorities, today threw into the waste basket 400,000 voters of the Shas movement, which represents the vulnerable public in Israel and who, just two months ago, went to the ballot box, while they know everything." Something about Minister Aryeh Deri.
Deri's ruling is likely to shake up Netanyahu's coalition government and add to already simmering tensions between his government and Israel's Supreme Court over a controversial judicial reform plan.