Thursday, March 30, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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The urgent threat to Israeli democracy that brought that entire country to a halt Sunday is far from over.
True, there is a lull. Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was compelled to delay passage of legislation that would have dramatically weakened Israel’s Supreme Court because of opposition by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators — including military reservists and leaders of the high-tech sector. Add to that a historic general strike of unionized workers, and Bibi was forced to offer a monthlong “dialogue” with opposition political leaders over his judicial plans until Israel’s parliament returns from a break.
Yet the personal motivation that drove Netanyahu to spring his judicial plan on the public and political opponents will likely doom any compromise. Most of Bibi’s critics, including his former attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, accuse him of seeking the judicial overhaul in order to prevent being jailed if convicted of corruption at his ongoing trial.
To save himself, Netanyahu must remain in power and push through laws that will protect him. To stay in power, he must continue to appease the ultranationalist and religious parties in his governing coalition who oppose compromise.
Thus, Israel has a leader who is willing to sacrifice his country’s democratic structures in order to maintain his hold on power.
Israeli democracy has few checks and balances to protect individual and minority rights, except for the Supreme Court and the attorney general.
The “reforms” Bibi seeks would politicize the now independent role of the attorney general. Most critical, they would give the ruling coalition the power to appoint justices (as opposed to the current broad-based Judicial Selection Committee). They would also virtually eliminate judicial review and would permit the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to overrule any Supreme Court decision by a majority of one vote.
It is already easy to see how Netanyahu and his coalition partners would take advantage of a politicized Supreme Court to achieve their undemocratic goals.
For Bibi, the goal is self-protection. Even as the protests exploded, his coalition passed a law that makes it almost impossible to declare a sitting prime minister unfit for office. The law also prevents the Supreme Court from considering any such request.
For the ultrareligious parties that back Bibi, the goal is to prevent any court challenge to the permanent exemption of huge numbers of seminary students from military service — and to impose religious edicts on the majority of secular Israeli Jews and Arab citizens.
Down that road also lies the shrinkage of rights for women and the LGBT community — and secular Jews.
The ultranationalist parties in the coalition want to annex the West Bank. For them, the demise of the Supreme Court would eliminate the strongest institutional barrier to the mass expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, including on Palestinian-owned land. A neutered court might also empower coalition extremists to try to suppress the votes of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
And there is more. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the head of the far-right Jewish Power Party, called for settler violence against Palestinians, and police violence against Israeli protesters. Yet he has not only been made national security minister but has been promised his own “national guard force” by Bibi.
Neither Bibi nor his allies seem to care that their narrow goals threaten Israeli security, by causing internal turmoil and agitating many military reservists who may be willing to die for their democracy but not for a nondemocratic state. The prime minister’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for warning about this danger is proof of where his priorities lie.
So I agree with the Israel Policy Forum’s Nimrod Novik, former senior adviser to Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres, that “there is no way there can be a compromise” between Bibi and opposition leaders over the judicial legislation.
Similarly, Israeli-born University of Pennsylvania political science professor Guy Grossman, who has been carefully tracking the Israeli upheaval, believes that Netanyahu is “trying to kill the protest movement by saying, ‘Hey, we’re negotiating,’ and then in a month blaming the opposition for the negotiations’ failure.” Bibi has already cheated on Sunday’s deal by prepping the judicial bill so he can call a final vote at any time on 24 hours’ notice, taking the opposition by surprise.
Yet Grossman believes the opposition has little choice but to enter Bibi’s proposed dialogue, if only to show up his double-dealing. The key to Israel’s democratic future, however, may be whether opposition leaders hold firm for democracy and whether the broad civil society protest movement can maintain its energy and spring back into action if needed. Only then might Netanyahu’s coalition crumble.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Israel “cannot continue down this road,” and Netanyahu won’t be invited to the White House in the “near term.”
The White House should keep reminding the Israeli leader, in public, that the U.S.-Israel alliance is based on shared democratic values. That might help convince a few moderate members of Bibi’s Likud Party that they can no longer afford to support a leader who sacrifices Israeli security and democracy for his own interests while alienating their closest ally. After all, Bibi’s ruling coalition only has a margin of four votes.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
