Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition passed a law limiting the Supreme Court’s power, a majority-rule vote that exacerbates deep internal doubts about the health of the Jewish state’s democratic system.
“He's taken a gamble,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Vice President Jonathan Schanzer told the Washington Examiner. "He's betting that this will not ultimately have far-reaching effects on Israeli society and Israeli security. And it's a black box. There’s no way anyone knows.”
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Netanyahu’s allies pressed ahead with legislation to deprive the Israeli Supreme Court of its customary power to overturn the “reasonableness” of government decisions on a 64-0 vote conducted in defiance of an opposition boycott. The legislation is just one piece of a wider judicial overhaul program that many Israeli voters, including thousands of military reservists, fear would compromise the checks and balances at the heart of the system of governance, despite Netanyahu’s assurances to the contrary.
“Everyone’s eyes are on the Israeli Supreme Court, but any decision it makes will be extremely problematic,” the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz, a former career Israel Defense Intelligence official, wrote Monday. "The rejection of the law will lead Israel to a constitutional crisis. On the other hand, its approval will lead to unprecedented measures that could undermine the readiness of the Israel Defense Forces.”
U.S. officials faulted Netanyahu for proceeding with such a fundamental change on a party-line vote. "President Biden has publicly and privately expressed his views that major changes in a democracy should be — if they’re going to be enduring, must have as broad a consensus as possible," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters. "It was unfortunate that the vote today took place with the slimmest possible majority. We understand talks are ongoing and likely to continue over the coming weeks and months to forge a broader compromise, even with the Knesset in recess."
The push to pass the law sparked a renewal of the intense protests that have flared over the last several months. Israeli union officials are discussing a proposal to go on strike “until a complete shutdown is achieved” in order to force the government to back down.
"From this moment on, any unilateral progress in the reform will have serious consequences,” Histadrut labor federation Chairman Arnon Bar-David said Monday. “Either things will progress with broad agreement, or they will not progress at all.”
Netanyahu, 73, who participated in the vote one day after being fitted with a pacemaker for his heart, sought to allay those anxieties in a statement Monday. “We all agree that Israel must remain a strong democracy ... and that the court will continue to be independent and no side will take control of it,” he said. “It will not happen on our watch.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid panned that address as “another lie” by a prime minister who doesn’t dare to defy the far-right members of his slim coalition who have spearheaded the initiative to curtail the judiciary’s powers.
“The opposition will not be a partner in talks that are just an empty show,” Lapid said. “The sole purpose of [the statement] is to reduce pressure by the Americans and put the protests to sleep. The government of extremists and messianists cannot tear apart our democracy at noon, and in the evening send Netanyahu to say that he is proposing dialogue.”
Its passage has provoked intense street protests and raised the specter of a constitutional crisis that could pit Netanyahu against the military and intelligence communities whose admiration helped propels his rise to power. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant voted with the majority despite his known opposition to the measures, but signaled to reporters that he is keeping his political powder dry.
“If I were to vote against the law, I would have to resign,” Gallant reportedly told Israeli journalists. “If I had left, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s best that I stay at the wheel at such a time.”
The revelation of Gallant’s opposition to the wider package of bills, including one that would have allowed a simple majority of the Knesset to override Supreme Court legislative reviews, sparked major protests in March. Netanyahu moved to fire him but then reversed course, in part due to a percussive array of threats from Hamas and Hezbollah, but the memory of Gallant’s opposition still galvanized protesters on Monday.
“I wasn’t at the early protests. I started when they fired Gallant. Until then, I was worried, but I figured they had won and had the majority,” a young Israeli man waving a North Korean flag told the Times of Israel during a Monday protest in Tel Aviv. “But then the penny dropped that the state wasn’t going in a good direction. And I started to feel that my government wasn’t my government. It wasn’t acting for the entire people but only for those who voted for them.”
Other protest leaders compared Netanyahu to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And he may face still more intense opposition in the form of a political break with the Israeli intelligence community.
"If a constitutional crisis unfolds, I'll be on the right side of history — but we're not there yet,” Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly told agency personnel on Monday.
That closed-door message punctuates a public warning from former intelligence officials, including a longtime Netanyahu ally who argued that “the national security resilience of the State of Israel in the immediate time frame” by the attempt to ram through the overhaul.
"I'm afraid that if I don't say what I think, the situation of the State of Israel may, heaven forbid, deteriorate,” former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen told Israel’s Channel 12 News. My friends, my colleagues from the defense organizations, all those who say, ‘We are there to protect you, the citizens of the State of Israel, to the extent of paying a personal price’ — this is the defining event. The State of Israel is ahead of our personal interest, and that's how I feel today.”
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The message from the intelligence community, particularly the apparent leak from Barnea’s camp, could portend a backlash that dwarfs the protests triggered by Netanyahu’s earlier clash with the defense minister.
“Nobody knows what he means, but there is a veiled threat here that he could wield this institution in political ways, which has never been done before,” said Schanzer, the FDD expert. “I think that Barnea coming out in similar ways [to Gallant] would ignite the opposition in ways that we have not yet seen.”