Israel, for the first time ever, has appointed a resident of West Bank settlement as a judge of the Supreme Court, Xinhua reported.
The Judicial Appointments Committee last week named Noam Sohlberg, 50, along with three other justices, after a complex and controversial nomination process. Due to his relatively young age for the post, Sohlberg, who is from the community of Alon Shvut, south of Jerusalem, will most likely be nominated as president of the body in the next decade.
Knesset (parliament) Speaker Reuven Rivlin told Xinhua on Sunday that the appointments were an attempt to strike a balance between competing sectors of the Israeli populace.
"Almost everyone in Israel has an 'agenda,' and the balance-of- power that is created in the Supreme Court ... gives voice to a balanced spectrum of opinions," Rivlin said in an exclusive statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier suspended a controversial bill initiated by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, which would have weighted the judicial nomination procedure towards rightist nominees.
Knesset coalition chief, Ze'ev Elkin applauded Sohlberg's appointment, calling it a "victory of common sense."
Israeli rightists have complained in the past that Supreme Court nominees were too often chosen from among jurists who hewed to a left-of-center agenda in their judgments, and who frequently ruled against the settlement enterprise.
"Justice Sohlberg is an excellent judge that they wanted to disqualify merely due to his being a skullcap-wearing settler. We will continue in our attempts to diversify the court," Elkin said.
However, while right-wing lawmakers praised the appointment, a leading Arab opposition member, Ahmad Tibi, slammed the decision, calling it "a dark day for justice and equality in Israel."
"Even if a settler is a judge, he still lives on land that was deprived from the Palestinians. It is equivalent to nominating a thief as an arbitrator between a robber and his victim," Tibi said of Sohlberg's appointment.