Pedro González
Periodista
Nothing moved him. Not the nearly 30 mass demonstrations held every week this year, not the march of tens of thousands of Israelis on foot between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, not the harsh letter from the fighter pilots threatening to abandon their posts, not even the warnings from both the White House and a large part of the Jewish communities in the United States. All was ultimately futile, including President Isaac Herzog’s visit to the armoured room in Sheba Hospital where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recovering from the implantation of a pacemaker. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, voted on the Reasonableness Law, which marks the first and decisive stage of the reform of the Israeli judicial system, by 64 votes to 0, that is, with each and every one of the votes of the current government coalition, and none against because the entire opposition decided to boycott the vote by not participating in it, after all attempts at negotiation failed.
In essence, this first reform strips the Israeli Supreme Court of the power it has had until now to uphold or annul government decisions or appointments on the basis of their “reasonableness”, i.e. whether such acts are in accordance with the law, in a country that has no written constitution. It was thus one of the fundamental checks and balances in the separation of powers. This has now been cancelled by the government, according to the first angry statement by the head of the opposition, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid. This is not a victory for the [government] coalition,” he stressed, “but a defeat for Israeli democracy”.
This is obviously not the view of Likud and certainly not that of the more radical members of Netanyahu’s pro-Netanyahu government. For the powerful Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, ‘what we have achieved after many years of work and effort is to restore the balances of power, which were [initially] violated thirty years ago by the then chief justice Aharon Barak’.
The direct driving force behind the judicial reform, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, expressed restraint: “The law passed is of the utmost importance and I can express no greater and better wish than that the people will understand it”.
At the moment, at least a large part of the people still do not understand, as the rift is evident in Israel; as soon as the law was passed, protest demonstrations intensified with numerous street and road blockades. Scientist Shikma Bressler, who has taken the lead in the protest demonstrations, describes the passing of the law as “dictatorial legislation”. A description endorsed by the majority of those who have endured the increasing repression by the Israeli police every weekend. Far from the level and intensity of such demonstrations diminishing, week after week they have been joined by businessmen, executives of Israel’s prestigious technology companies, as well as writers, professors and intellectuals. Alongside them, it is the manifesto signed by more than 12,000 reservists, including 540 volunteer fighter pilots, who are considered crucial to the country’s defence, that has aroused the greatest alarm.
Yair Lapid himself revealed that he had held talks with leaders of the Shin Bet, which is in charge of internal security, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), all of whom agreed that “[Netanyahu] is leading us to disaster”. He had also warned that this law will bring about “the end of the people’s army”, in reference to the IDF, which also means “strengthening Israel’s enemies by causing enormous damage to the security of our country”.
Such proclamations, as well as those made by former prime minister and general Ehud Barak, or by former Defence Minister Benny Gantz, have been scorned with his usual dismissiveness by the current Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who increasingly appears as the government’s new strongman. For him, the coalition government received no popular mandate to soften the text of the law. He makes it clear that “it is the government that governs the State of Israel and not those who lead demonstrations, be it Shikma Bressler or Ehud Barak”.
The country is in a real ferment, rethinking essential questions of its identity. Although Ben-Gvir scorns it, the warnings that “Israel is heading towards a dictatorship”, voiced by personalities such as Ehud Barak, are causing quite a few citizens, especially young people, to ask themselves a number of questions. Netanyahu and his ministers have their work cut out to answer them… satisfactorily.
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