The Israeli government’s push for a judicial overhaul which would curb the independence of the supreme court and undermine the system of checks and balances in the country has sparked wide-spread protests and culminated on Saturday with a march to Jerusalem.
“There were many thrilling moments in the last days and nights, in the march on the way to Jerusalem,” well-known author David Grossman wrote in an op-ed on Sunday morning. “There was a rare understanding that each of us is 'made' of many people who are here, who continue their journey together up the castle, in the heat of 37 degrees, in the exaltation of the soul, no less.”
He referred to past history, dating back to the destruction of the second Temple two thousand years ago, when “the people of Israel knew divisions and ruptures”. But what has been happening here in recent months is no longer on this continuum, he said. “A process is taking place here that there are still no words to describe. That's why it’s so scary.”
Following the protests by reservists in the military, including key staff in elite unites and hundreds of pilots in the air force, the frightening reality has dawned on many that Israel’s military strength and existence “depends to a large extent on those hundreds, and therefore we should hurry up and try to reach peace agreements with our neighbors-enemies and not challenge ourselves in another war”.
The protests include all strata of society, among others the high-tech industry and the health care sector. On Sunday, Israel’s largest labour organisation (Histradrut) and representatives of the business sector called on the government to limit the scope of the “reasonableness” bill and suspend all legislation on the judicial reform in the coming months unless backed by at least 75 Knesset members (out of 120).
The divide in Israeli society reached the army with reservists signing letters and petitions that they will refuse to show up for voluntary duty if the government pushes through the legislation. “This is not what we signed up to,” they say and accuse the government of breaking the social contract with the “people’s army” which was formed to defend Israel’s democracy and existence.
“We have defended Israel’s borders and now we have to defend the border between democracy and dictatorship,” one officer said.
The government has put them in an impossible situation by changing the basic rules of governance and seems unwilling to give in to their protests. It accuses them of draft evasion and even of a military coup. There is no doubt that the judicial overhaul is damaging cohesion in society and in the army. According to former generals it has already damaged Israel’s deterrence and military preparedness.
Prime-Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who is ultimately responsible for the situation and the chaos it has caused in Israel, is pressured by extremist coalition partners to push through the judicial overhaul at all costs. It would serve their ideological agenda but also his own personal interest. If he backs down, he risks the collapse of the government. If he gives in to them, he endangers Israel’s future.
The Prime-Minister is still at a hospital after an urgent operation Sunday night when he had a pacemaker installed. He would need the proverbial tree to climp down from. His hard-core electoral base, which demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening, supports the legislation but a majority in the population favours a broad consensus solution, according to the opinion polls.
“We are continuing with the efforts to complete the legislation —including efforts to do so with an agreement,” he said at the hospital. His own party rejects any compromise on the legislation and claims that it has a mandate to do so. There is hardly anyone among the 32 parliament members belonging to his party who dares to call on Netanyahu to stop the legislation frenzy and vote against it.
“This week the fate of Israel as a democratic state will be decided,” Grossman wrote in his op-ed. He was referring to the final vote on Monday in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) on the government’s bill to amend a basic law which would abolish the right of the Supreme Court to cancel “unreasonable” decisions by the government and ministers.
Tent camp of protestors in Jerusalem, close to the Parliament, credit: Michel Braunstein
This criterion has been used for checks of arbitrary decisions and political appointments in the public administration. A former supreme court judge warned that a ban on applying the reasonableness criterion could also undermine objective decision-making in the municipalities. The government claims that it only wants to give freedom to politicians to decide on the policies for which they were elected.
“Israel was born democratic and we have a democratic instinct,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Sunday in the Knesset. “The government wants to turn us into Poland and Hungary, but we are not them.”
The “reasonableness” bill is only one element in the proposed judicial overhaul. The most important ones are the following ones:
Changing the composition of the committee that selects Supreme Court judges, by adding more politicians and giving them the majority in the committee;
Abolishing the right of the Supreme Court to cancel “unreasonable” government decisions;
Requiring a qualified majority of 12 judges of 15 in the Supreme court to disqualify parliamentary legislation that is incompatible with basic laws or fundamental rights;
Introducing an “override clause” which would give the Parliament the right to reinstate legislation with the smallest possible majority (61 out of 120 lawmakers);
Turning the current legal advisors in the ministries from professional officials into politically appointments controlled by the ministers.
Ehud Yaari, a veteran journalist and leading expert on the Israeli – Arab conflict, describes the judicial reform as an attempt to abolish the independence of the courts and subordinate the judiciary under the government. “It will never pass,” he told The Brussels Times at a meeting in Brussels last month. “It has only created tension and divided the country.”
“Prime-Minister Netanyahu has become a lame duck who is blackmailed by the extremist settler lobby and his coalition partners. The government cannot last that long. Hopefully a healing process will start and bring things in Israel back to normal. In a worst scenario it could develop to civil disobedience and even worse.”
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
