Last Wednesday, January 2, the 20th Knesset closed its doors after 1,386 days since its initiation and went into recess. According to the Knesset records, the MK who submitted the most bill proposals during this period is Communist Dov Khenin (Hadash – Joint List) with 455 bill proposals. In second place is Labor MK Merav Michaeli who proposed 227 bill, followed by Itzik Shmuli (Labor) who submitted 183 bills to Israel’s parliament. On the average, taking into account recesses, Khenin proposed about one bill every two days during the almost four years that the outgoing Knesset served.
Hadash lawmaker Dov Khenin (Joint List) announced last Tuesday, January 1, that he will not be running for the Knesset in April 9’s general elections. (Footage: HaHadashot)
However, Khenin will not be back to break his record in the 21st Knesset, having announced his retirement this week. Einav Schiff of the daily newspaper Yedioth Aharonot has praised Khenin as a dying breed at a time when right-wing lawmaking seems more akin to buffoonery: “His departure is another sign of the disintegration of the Knesset’s good standing,” wrote the journalist of Khenin’s retirement from direct legislative work.
To supervise government’s work, parliamentarians can submit a parliamentary query to government ministers. There are three types of queries (regular, urgent and direct), and each MK can submit up to 80 queries per year. But, it turns out that many Knesset members do not make use of this opportunity and refrain from submitting any queries whatsoever. The MKs who submitted the largest number of queries during the 20th Knesset are Mickey Levy (Yesh Atid) with 130 queries, Yousef Jabareen (Hadash – Joint List) with 102 and Ahmad Tibi (Ta’al – Joint List) with 80. The parliamentary fraction that submitted the large number of queries (500!) is the Joint List – most of them were submitted by Hadash MKs.
