Israel has drifted into a political and constitutional crisis.
In the darkest Israeli assessments, the country is slipping into a system where the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a far-right government will soon exercise unlimited power without restraints of any kind.
The government, which started at the end of 2022, is now approving laws in the country’s parliament, or Knesset, by which it strips the Supreme Court of its power and turns it into a rubber stamp. The goal seems to be to bring the judiciary under political control.
These legal reforms have brought the people to the streets. Demonstrations have been held for more than two months in various parts of Israel.
There is no real constitution in Israel, but a set of basic laws. For this reason, the importance of the Supreme Court is very important, as the Supreme Court interprets with its decisions whether the laws enacted by the Parliament are in harmony with the Basic Laws.
The plan of Netanyahu’s government means that a new distribution of power is underway in Israel, where political power, legislative power and executive power are to be transferred to Netanyahu’s government.
That is why there is fear in the demonstrations that the country is on the way to a dictatorship.
The dictatorship of the government led by Netanyahu has a particularly bad aftertaste because Benjamin Netanyahu himself has been accused of corruption. Subordinating the judiciary to his will appears to be a brutal desire to avoid punishment.
Israel’s political field has become drastically right-wing in recent decades. The current government is held by far-right, ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious and ultra-conservative groups and has a majority in parliament.
The Supreme Court has long been the subject of harsh criticism from precisely these circles. For them, the Supreme Court represents liberal leftism.
Israel’s authoritarian and undemocratic development has been compared to the problem countries of the EU, Hungary and Poland.
The severe polarization of the political field is partly also compared to the United States. There, however, the two chambers of Congress are held by competing parties, and the balance of power is thus maintained.
One of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government The central element of the “coup plan” is that the government ultimately wants to decide on the appointments of judges in the judiciary.
There is a committee for appointments with broad representation from the judiciary. The government wants the majority of this committee for itself. The government wants to decide which judges it will deal with in the future.
In addition, the Netanyahu government wants the parliament to be able to overturn the law imposed by the Supreme Court with a simple majority vote. Netanyahu’s government has a majority in parliament.
The majority of the government is divided and it pulls in many directions, and that is ultimately the most dangerous thing here.
What kind of exchange and trading are different laws subject to between different interest groups? On what issue did other groups bow to the demands of Netanyahu’s Likud party, and what price do extreme religious and conservative circles pay for the repeal of the law?
In the public debate, there have already been ideas from, for example, extremist religious groups that the status of religious family law should be emphasized. It has a direct impact on women’s status and women’s rights.
Also the position of the liberal media has been questioned. A simple majority in the parliament makes it possible, at least in theory, to intervene in the activities of the media criticizing the government’s actions.
The demands of Jewish settlements and groups that speak loudly in favor of their construction have their own chapter. The Supreme Court has from time to time put a stop to illegal settlement construction with its own guidelines. Now we want to get rid of that hold.
At the same time that Israelis have demonstrated against the Israeli government, the Palestinian areas of the West Bank have also been very violent.
During the beginning of the year, already around 70 Palestinian fighters and civilians have died in Israeli army and police operations. A dozen Israelis have died in the clashes.
This is of course directly linked to the divide and rule policy of the Israeli government. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s approach to changing the status of the Supreme Court and the resulting fight is very similar to his way of handling the Palestinian issue.
According to the Haaretz newspaper, Netanyahu has said that “we will deal with the changes in the law at once like tearing off a band-aid”. It tingles for a while, but then it gets easier.
The same directness based on strength has been characteristic of Netanyahu’s way of governing the Palestinian territories.
A foretaste of the combination of directness and unrestrained power was obtained a little over a week ago in the West Bank, in the small town of Huwara, after a Palestinian fighter shot dead two Israelis traveling in a car.
Not long after that, a group from the Jewish settlement attacked Huwara. A group of hundreds of settlers destroyed and burned houses, cars, crops and trees. They also stabbed and beat the onlookers.
The Israeli police watched the events without interfering. A week after this, the police were videotaped dancing with the settlers in the same places.
Israel’s notoriously far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that Huwara should be “wiped out of the national chamber completely”. He regretted his choice of words later, but the message to himself became clear.
Huwara reflects well the kind of soil in which unrestrained power is being planted.