In two months, the coalition of conservative, far -right and religious parties in power in Israel has mobilized against it one of the largest protest movements in the history of the country. The reform of justice that this coalition wants to adopt divide. Dangerously.
The senior officials of the judicial institution see it as an attempt to weaken it by restraining the prerogatives of the Supreme Court. The latter concentrates immense powers by being both a court of administrative, civil and criminal appeal and constitutional council.
His fifteen judges embody the only institutional counter-power in a small country without regional elected officials, whose parliament has only one chamber and in which the majority merges with the executive. They fear that a simple majority of the Knesset is sufficient in the future to adopt any law, according to the emotion of the moment, without legal supervision. A potential danger in a country which does not have a constitution and which does not submit to any international text protecting human rights.
The Israelis who demonstrate fear that their state will abruptly anchor in the camp of illiberal democracies, such as Poland or Hungary. The president of the central bank and the business circles warn against a legal instability which could encourage rating agencies to lower the sovereign note of the country. Washington as Paris also express their opposition.
toxic force report
In corruption trials since 2021, the Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, establishes a toxic balance of power with the judges. He claims to have been elected in November 2022 on the promise to carry out this reform. But he has since failed to convince the Israelis of his necessity as of the urgency to have it adopted, as the opinion surveys show.
m. Netanyahu and its partners have 64 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. But they were elected this fall with less than 50 % of the vote. They cannot therefore avail themselves of the broad consensus that such a reform requires. They must listen to the president’s call, Isaac Herzog, to suspend this reform to initiate a real dialogue with the opposition, which would also be well inspired to include in the debate the minority of Palestinian citizens of Israel (20 % of the population).
This crisis is actually brooding longer. The Supreme Court has never been the impeccable bastion of defenders of minorities, human rights and democracy that its defenders are doing today. In the constant contempt of international law, his judges have let the executive have favored since 1967 the colonization of the Palestinian territories. They helped to root a dual legal regime, which offers Israeli settlers the protection of a legal framework close to that which all citizens of the Hebrew State benefits, and which leaves the Palestinians at the mercy of the military arbitrariness.
It is this regime that the most determined supporters of the reform intend to complement. They want to train the country towards the pure and simple annexation of the territories in fact and, in the long term, in law. To achieve this, they logically ended up turning against the judges with the support of the ultraorthodox Jewish parties, anxious to preserve their community from any supposed state interference. This reform therefore accentuates a flight forward which must be stopped.