Israel is convulsing, torn apart by its government’s attempt to undermine judicial oversight of the legislature. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, and are blocking roads across the country. A general strike is threatened by unions. Doctors will today walk out across the country. And, in a shocking first, some 10,000 army reservists have said they will not serve a dictatorship.
In another measure of the disquiet generated by the bill, a business survey has reported that some 70 per cent of start-ups “have begun taking active legal and financial steps, like withdrawing cash reserves, changing HQ location outside Israel, relocation of employees and conducting layoffs.”
It is a battle not just about judicial reform, but over Israel’s historic essence, the nature of its democracy. A battle between those who want a more secular and pluralist state, and those with a more religious, ultra-nationalist vision now represented by the country’s ultra-right wing government, under prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ultra-orthodox, vital to his majority, see the court as an obstacle to their way of life, while the opposition warns Israel is being turned into a theocracy.
In the Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu’s coalition bulldozed through the first of its planks of supreme court reform, severely curtailing the latter’s ability to overrule legislation deemed to be contrary to the country’s basic law. It is the alternative to a written constitution which the justices have traditionally scrupulously honoured. In a country with just one house of parliament, the court is a bulwark for minorities against a system with few other checks and balances.
Netanyahu and his allies defend the new law as a protection of democracy, a means of preventing judges from interfering with the decisions of elected lawmakers.
The court has often infuriated religious leaders by opposing certain privileges and financial subsidies for the ultra-Orthodox. And it has blocked some of the settler movement’s most ambitious goals including construction of Israeli towns on privately owned Palestinian land.
If the court now decides to strike down the new law it will provoke an unprecedented legitimacy clash between legislature and judiciary.
Netanyahu on Monday night said he was prepared to negotiate over further legislation with the sceptical opposition. Israel would “safeguard individual rights for all”, he promised, and not become “a state governed by Jewish religious law”.
Cabinet colleagues were, however, singing to a different tune. “This is only the beginning, " boasted Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultra-nationalist security minister.
One thing is sure, Israel faces a stormy road ahead.