SHATIL scored a success for all Israeli civil society organizations this month when it succeeded against all odds in getting the Knesset to exclude NGO lobbyists from a new law regulating lobbying in the Knesset. SHATIL led an ad hoc forum of organizations that included NIF-grantee, the Association for Civil rights in Israel, the Economic Justice Law Clinic at Tel Aviv University, the Israeli Disabled Human Rights Organization and various environmental organizations in this effort. The original law applied to both organizational and commercial lobbyists. Both the MK's who introduced the law and other MK's strongly opposed the exclusion, but four months of intensive work paid off. When the law passed the Knesset in its last session of the season, organizational lobbyists were not affected.
"It's important that the Knesset recognized the difference between lobbyists for social justice and lobbyists for commercial interests," said Lea Lieberman-Bender, the senior lobby consultant at SHATIL who led the effort. "It enables us to continue doing our work to achieve a more just society unhampered."
