Israeli parliament gives war power to 2 top leaders

JERUSALEM — As Israel faces rising tensions with Iran, Syria and Gaza, its parliament passed a new law allowing the prime minister and defense minister to decide alone whether their nation will go to war.

The legislation, which comes after multiple attacks inside Syria widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, makes it much easier for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare war. Although the new law restricts the use of that power to “extreme circumstances,” it has provoked domestic criticism for concentrating it in the hands of two people.

The law is “nothing less than insane,” said Ofer Shelah, a legislator from the centrist Yesh Atid party, which sits in opposition. “I am deluged with calls from experienced security officials who are shocked, and rightfully so,” he wrote on Twitter.

The measure, an amendment to the Basic Laws that serve as Israel’s constitution, passed Monday night by a vote of 62-41 in the 120-seat Knesset. And it comes amid an escalating shadow war with Iran.

Airstrikes on a suspected missile storage site near Hama, Syria, on Sunday that destroyed a cache of missiles and killed at least 16 people, many of them Iranians, were reported to have been carried out by Israel. Israel is believed to have conducted several previous attacks in Syria on assets belonging to Iran and its allies, and is bracing for promised Iranian retaliation for a strike on an air base in Syria last month.

The new law would not necessarily change the procedure for those airstrikes, which Israel has not acknowledged. What approval might be required for these strikes is not public information.

But it could give Netanyahu more latitude to broaden the hostilities into open warfare.

Still, critics note Netanyahu is under investigation in multiple corruption cases and is fighting for his political future, and the current defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is a political hard-liner with little security experience.

Those issues could raise questions about their motivations should they decide to take Israel into warfare.