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The streets of Israel have been boiling with anger and frustration for three months. And they continue to seethe even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayu rest — only a little — in an effort to control the state judges.
He will allow a few weeks for the protests to calm down and a “broad consensus” to emerge, he said Monday, before continuing his controversial move. plan to reform the judicial system.
It is a package of laws that will curtail the power of the Supreme Court judges over the elected government, among the moves designed to give the Israeli Knesset — its parliament — the final word on legal matters.
Netanyahu’s ministers have accused the court of being “too liberal,” with a tendency to overreach in rejecting laws that are now favored by Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, such as imposing Jewish religious restrictions on secular Israelis or making it easier to expand Israeli settlements in the territories. The occupied West. Bank.
Opponents called the proposed law “undemocratic,” and said it would end the independence of the judiciary and merely check the power of the government.
He flexed his muscles at a weekend of marches across Israel, including one that ended with protesters breaking through security barriers around Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem.
“If there is an opportunity to avoid civil war through dialogue,” Netanyahu said on national TV Monday, “I, as prime minister, take the time for dialogue.”
Efforts at conciliation were countered directly by the insistence that “reforms will pass,” as tweeted by the right-wing coalition partner, the leader of the Jewish National Front, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“Nothing is going to scare us,” he said. Ben-Gvir only agreed to take a break after demanding – and demanding – a promise from Netanyahu that a new national guard would be created and placed under his control as minister of national security.
‘This is not just a group of people who disagree and don’t like each other.
The fervor and persistence of the protests — as well as the growing polarization of the governing movement — have upset many in Israel, including President Isaac Herzog. He warned of an “abyss” that was “tearing us apart” and suggested some compromise.
But they have rejected by Netanyahu.
At the weekend, Netanyahu’s own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the riots posed a “clear, direct and real threat to the security of the country” and called for the reforms to be withdrawn, after Israel’s reserve army threatened to boycott duty if the reforms were implemented. front.
Netanyahu fired Gallant, added to the protests and “sent shock waves across the political spectrum,” said Renan Levine, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies Israeli voter behavior.
“It is very clear that this is not just a group of dissidents and malcontents protesting, but really some important parts of the country’s backbone,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands have filled the streets every week, with placards accusing Netanyahu of using the technique of “the end of democracy” for his own political advantage: to promote issues important to ultra-nationalists and religious. coalition partner and has the potential to further influence a justice system that considers diversity allegations of corruption to Netanyahu himself.
A ‘secular rebellion’
The protests have reinvigorated the political opposition – that is, the left and center-left parties whose electoral fortunes have faded, but whose growing popular support now collectively gives Netanyahu’s coalition an edge, based on two polls released there.
The march also created an unlikely alliance. Bankers have joined activists and young people to block Israel’s main roads.
“He destroyed our democratic system forever,” Eitan Kahana, 27, said after Netanyahu’s speech. “I will not let this pass, forever. I will do everything in my power to protest it.”
The Union has disrupted hospital and flight services at Israel’s main airport. Meanwhile, retirees stand next to high-tech workers like Yoav Fisher, who want to “protect everything that Israel has gained, from becoming a high-tech global machine and a center of progress and enlightenment in a hostile region.”
This grand coalition represents a “secular revolt” by the majority of non-ultra-religious Israelis, argue Haaretz news columnist and Netanyahu biographer Ansel Pfeffer.
“This is about the secular middle class recognizing that this may be the last chance to preserve what is often seen as Israel’s essential character,” he wrote, defending a democratic system where the ultra-Orthodox community does not enforce the rules. the whole country.
In doing so, “a very strong and emotional protest” has reached deep into Israeli society, said Barak Sella, director of the Reut Institute, a think-tank in Haifa. And they upset “the delicate balance of being Jewish and democratic,” he said. In effect, separate people.
Many Jewish nationalist governments backed down
Many people who value Israel’s distinctly Jewish character tend to support reform, Sella said. This week, for the first time, large groups of counter-protesters also gathered outside Israel’s parliament, as police struggled to keep opposition groups at bay.
Some of the government’s strongest supporters are settlers, pushing back part of a proposed judicial reform package that they believe would make it easier for Israel to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank, to take land it believes is historically Jewish from Palestine.
Others are supporters of rights for ultra-religious Jews. Among other things, he asked for a guarantee that men attending religious schools called yeshivas would be exempted from military service, something that was rejected by the top court, but which was guaranteed by the new law.
“By the grace of God, the people of Israel chose a Jewish and nationalistic government that they thought would uphold the Torah,” twenty prominent rabbis declared in a statement.
Both sides vowed to keep up the pressure, stoking divisions and increasing instability in a country that prides itself on being the only democracy in the Middle East.
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