A new bill was submitted yesterday to the Knesset for consideration. The law is being called "The Petitions Law" and would allow anybody to submit a petition to the Knesset and force the Knesset to deal with the issue presented in the petition.

The law was proposed jointly by a numbers of MKs from across the spectrum of political parties.

In order to ensure the petitions are formulated properly and that they deal with an issue relevant to the Knesset, a new Knesset Committee would also be formed to sort through the presented petitions and to pass along or stop petitions from advancing to the Knesset.

The article does not say how many people will need to be signed on a petition for it to be valid, but it does say that each petition will require to be included with it the topic of the petition and its name, along with the teudat zehut and address of each signatory, and it must state who is the representative of the petition and who is the deputy. People who signed on any given petition also will have the ability to revoke their signature, and if all signatories revoke the signature the petition will be considered void.

Sample petition forms will be posted to the Knesset website, as will submitted petitions, allowing more citizens the ability to add their name to a petition they might like.

The purpose of the law is to improve the connection between the average citizen and the Knesset, after studies have shown that the people have largely lost faith in the ruling institutions. The people feel they have no way of influencing the elected representatives outside of election seasons.
(source: NRG)

Another possibility for solving this problem would be to make the system more representative. As it is, the elected MKs have no specific connection to the people, answer to nobody but their party leader and offer no real representation. To paraphrase the Boston tea Party people, we have a system of taxation with no representation - fix that, fix the system to be one that is representative, and the rest may follow.

Allowing such petitions to influence the Knesset work sounds like it could create chaos. People will be able to band together and force the Knesset to discuss whatever crazy issue might come to mind.

I personally think this might be a good opportunity, if the law will be passed, to force the Knesset to discuss the situation on Har Habayit. That debate has been quashed in more ways than one.