JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed a senior cabinet member with a criminal record on Sunday, complying with a Supreme Court ruling even as he pursues contested judicial reforms that would curb its powers.

Pledging to find “every legal means” of keeping Aryeh Deri in public office in future, Netanyahu told him during a weekly cabinet session he was being removed from the interior and health ministries, according to an official transcript.

A Deri confidant, Barak Seri, told Army Radio earlier on Sunday that the portfolios would be kept by other members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Shas as it remains in the coalition.

The Supreme Court last week ordered Netanyahu to dismiss Deri, citing his 2022 plea-bargain conviction for tax fraud.

That ruling stoked a stormy debate in Israel - accompanied by nationwide protests - over reform proposals that Netanyahu says will restore balance between the branches of government but that critics say will undermine judicial independence.

A poll in Israel Hayom newspaper found 35% support for Netanyahu’s bid to shake up the system for bench appointments, with 45% of respondents opposed. There was just 26% support for his government’s bid to enable parliament, with a one-vote majority, to override some Supreme Court decisions.

In his cabinet statement, Netanyahu described the Deri ruling as “regrettable” and “indifferent to the public will.”

The less than month-old religious-nationalist coalition creaked elsewhere as a far-right partner boycotted the cabinet session in protest at the demolition on Friday of a small settler outpost that had been erected in the occupied West Bank.