by The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to reject legislative control over the judiciary puts an end for now to the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s languishing effort to shrink the courts, which had already sparked nine months of protests that only ended when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
The protests had deeply divided Israel, but the subsequent war united it, and even pilots and reservists who had vowed to ignore the military exercises immediately showed up to fight before they were called up.
If Monday’s court decision ripped away this wartime poultice, once again showing the culture war at the heart of Israeli politics, Netanyahu and his government responded by appealing again to wartime unity to try to downplay their loss. It was another version of Netanyahu’s argument against almost all critics of his performance and policies: that these are all issues that should be discussed “after the war.”
And the court’s ruling, however important, is expected to have little or no impact on the conduct of the war itself.
“I don’t think the ruling will change anything,” said Amit Segal, a political columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, who reported on a leak of the ruling and is considered close to Netanyahu. Even before the war, he said, “Netanyahu did not have enough artillery, so to speak, to overwhelm the opponents.” Therefore, it helps him that this decision came during the war, Segal said, because “it can justify a lack of reaction, and after the war he will have more pressing matters,” such as his own political survival.
But the tribunal and the war are connected in some way, because both are crucial to the future and future identity of Israel. Israel sees the war as existential: the best way to restore its reputation in the region as ineradicable and as a beacon of security for Jews around the world. The court decision goes to the heart of the debate over whether Israel will remain a thriving democracy, which is vital to its special relationship with the West.
Viewed narrowly, the court has ruled that the judiciary must be able to control the ability of a simple majority in Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, to change the country’s fundamental laws and alter the democratic character of the state. He left open the possibility of fundamental legal changes through a special vote with a larger majority.
Netanyahu and his allies have argued that the courts have too much power over elected lawmakers’ legislation, are too liberal and are undemocratically elected.
Critics of Netanyahu, whose own trial on corruption charges is ongoing, saw the court ruling as having saved the nature of a balanced democracy in a country with no constitution or upper house. Some, like former attorney general and former Supreme Court judge Menachem Mazuz, called it “the most important ruling since the founding of the state.”
Until now, Mazuz said in a telephone interview, “the Knesset had the feeling that they could do whatever they wanted, determine that there are two suns during the day and four during the night.” But the court ruled “that there are limitations on the authority of the Knesset, that it is impossible to harm the democratic or Jewish character of the State, that there are limitations.” That, he said, could allow for a different and better agreement in the future “between the legal and political systems.”
But the ruling also “plays into existing culture war issues in Israel,” said Bernard Avishai, an Israeli-American analyst in Jerusalem. “There is increasingly a divide between people who think that the war can be won and, like Netanyahu, that Israel’s only goal is to become stronger and more intimidating, and those who think that the war really cannot be won in those terms, that we need some strength. “It’s a kind of diplomatic view, that we can’t continue to alienate ourselves from the rest of the world, from the region and from the United States, where we get our weapons,” he said.
The court’s ruling “has made more vivid this growing tension between those who want a plausible diplomatic solution and those who want to return to the status quo before the war, who are the same people who wanted to weaken the court,” Avishai said. saying.
Netanyahu and his allies, he added, are pushing for “a Jewish state to rule the entire land of Israel,” including the annexation of large parts of the West Bank and even, as some ministers suggest, the resettlement of Gaza, while “the court was looking “as an attempt to liberalize the country, which was a challenge to the status quo and to the supporters of annexation and the ‘Land of Israel’.”
For Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli analyst and pollster, “there is a direct link between the outcome of this war and the nature of Israel, what kind of state it will be and whether it can continue to claim to be democratic.”
The war, he said, “has been a major accelerant for a far-right government’s broader plans, including annexation, possible expulsion, and complete and formal Jewish sovereignty over all the land and the people who inhabit it.”
Netanyahu is expected to use the ruling to continue trying to shore up his slim majority in Parliament, based on his coalition with religious nationalists and the far right. Netanyahu has already refused to condemn some of the harshest statements from his allies on the annexation of the West Bank and the resettlement of Gaza. He has presented himself as the vital bulwark against criticism from the rest of the world, including the United States, and the whole idea, favored by President Biden, of a future Gaza governed by a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority.
In a recent example, Netanyahu has supported his far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who rejected Biden’s demand that Israel transfer to the Palestinian Authority the portion of Palestinian tax funds it collects on behalf of the authority, earmarked for to his employees in Gaza, hinting that he would resign from the government.
“Bibi remains her advocate,” Avishai said.
Netanyahu also made clear, as recently as a news conference on Saturday, that he has no intention of resigning, even after the war and even as his Likud party sinks in opinion polls. TO Channel 13 survey He said the elections would now secure the Likud only 16 seats and, along with its current coalition parties, only 45 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, compared with 38 seats for Netanyahu’s rival, Benny Gantz, and 71 seats for the opposition parties.
Scheindlin, the pollster, said Likud’s coordinated call for wartime unity after the court ruling was politically smart, because even the party’s supporters didn’t care as much about judicial reform as they did about other issues, including the outcome of the election. war. Segal, however, said the ruling could help shore up Likud support, because many of the party’s voters would be angry about it.
Still, the call for unity and the accusation that the court ruling harms the war effort are “pretty cynical,” Scheindlin said, “since it was the judicial reform project that really tore the country apart.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party said that “the court’s decision contradicts the people’s desire for unity, particularly in times of war,” while Itamar Ben Gvir, minister of national security, said: “At a time when our soldiers are giving their lives for the people of Israel in Gaza every day, the high court judges decided to weaken his spirit.”
The subtext, Scheindlin said, is that “nothing we don’t like should happen until the war is over, and the war will never be over,” at least not for a long time.
Nathan Odenheimer contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
