Israel faces extraordinary turmoil and a democratic crisis as opposition leaders and protesters step up their campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan.
Netanyahu and his coalition allies on the religious and political right won a key victory Monday by voting through the first part of the overhaul, removing the right of judges on the Supreme Court to overrule Cabinet ministers’ decisions for being “unreasonable.”
In response, thousands of protesters blocked streets outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, some of whom had camped overnight in a nearby park. Leading Israeli newspapers published entirely black front pages Tuesday.
NBC News explains the latest developments and why they matter.
What happened Monday?
On Monday, the Knesset passed one of its most contentious laws since Israel was founded in 1948. While the ability to overrule Cabinet ministers’ decisions for being “unreasonable” is rarely used, it was employed in January when the court ruled that the appointment of a minister was “unreasonable in the extreme” because of his criminal convictions. Netanyahu, much to his displeasure, had no choice but to remove him.
The change is part of a long-promised raft of proposals from Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right and hard-line religious parties. Netanyahu has long argued that the Supreme Court is a liberal, politically motivated body in need of reform.
There were hopes that a compromise could be reached. But the ruling coalition passed the law by 64 votes, with none against — opposition lawmakers left the parliament chamber in protest during the roll call.
In a statement addressed to the Israeli people Monday, Netanyahu said, “We passed the amendment on the reason of reasonableness, so that the elected government could lead the policy in accordance with the decision of the majority of the country’s citizens.”
Far-right Cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, said in a statement that the change had started “to repair the judicial system and restore the balance between the authorities that was violated 30 years ago by Aharon Barak,” referring to the former president of the Supreme Court who developed the “reasonableness” test.
Why is it so important?
Unlike the U.S. Congress, Israel’s parliament has just one house, and there is no written constitution, giving the government a high degree of autonomy. The ability of judges to intervene was seen as a vital check on executive power.
It may sound like a technical detail, but the division this and other proposed changes have caused is unlike anything long-standing observers have seen.
“This is a serious threat. This has never happened before, and we are going into a civil war now,” Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, told the British broadcaster Channel 4 News on Monday.
Protesters, including military reservists and the 150 or so businesses that closed Monday in solidarity, say putting even more power in the hands of the prime minister is a risk.
“The fear is that if they get this through, they will weaken democracy, especially because there are many elements in the coalition who are not very democratic — the far right is not very democratic,” said Gideon Rahat, an Israeli politics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“The only check and balance we have is the courts — we don’t have strong local government; we don’t have constituencies. … And the government is trying to weaken it,” he said.
What happens next?
It is far from over. Protests will continue, and more judicial changes are coming.
In a twist, it’s possible that Israel’s judges could end up deciding the fate of the “reasonableness” bill. The Movement for Quality Government, a good governance group, has filed a petition to the court arguing that the change is illegal.
Future proposed laws would give the government greater powers to appoint judges and remove ministries’ independent legal advisers.
No demonstrations were expected Tuesday, but protest groups have vowed to carry on as Netanyahu plans to take the rest of his judicial changes to parliament.
“The government of the destruction of the house voted to crush the State of Israel as we knew it — we will fight them to the end,” the Black Flags protest group said in a statement.
Histradut, the country’s trade union umbrella group, said after Monday’s votes that it would convene a meeting of its members to discuss a general strike.
But while the government has shown no signs of relenting, the sheer scope of the opposition to Netanyahu’s changes could be too much, some said.
“The protests and other pressures, such as what Biden might do and the economy, that all might restrict this plan,” Rahat said. “I think they did not predict this amount of rejection.”
President Joe Biden has repeatedly urged Netanyahu not to impose his judicial plan on an angry public, with the White House again making that clear in a statement Monday, adding that Biden has been a “lifelong friend” to Israel.
The columnist Thomas Friedman of The New York Times suggested that only Biden has the power to stop Netanyahu’s plan.
Netanyahu, who has survived numerous political crises over his many years in power and is on trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which he denies, may ultimately lose out in his quest to remake Israel’s judicial system.
“Netanyahu is riding the back of a tiger, but sometimes the tiger takes him places he doesn’t want to be taken,” Rahat said.
