Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, July 24, 2023. MAYA ALLERUZZO/AP
Israel, the state that wanted to be both Jewish and democratic, is being torn apart. These two components, which were already expressed in the 1948 Declaration of Independence, collide after the vote in Parliament on Monday, July 24, on the first part of the judicial reform envisaged by Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
We can put the scope of this change in one of the fundamental laws that replaces the constitution of the country that has never had a law into perspective. This text facilitates the executive branch’s dismissal of high-ranking officials it displeases and the appointment of political allies whom the Supreme Court might suspect of incompetence or corruption. What worries Israel, however, is that the ruling coalition has decided to enforce it despite a broad consensus about its toxicity.
That fear has been voiced for months by the opposition, which boycotted the vote, by the entire judiciary, by business and the country’s central bank governor, by the army and more than a million protesters out of nine million people, and more broadly by an opinion that polls show will overwhelmingly reject the reform if it is passed uncompromisingly.
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His secular and liberal opponents see it as the first step in a revolution in power relations in favor of the executive. They fear the emergence of an authoritarian state controlled by religious fundamentalists, racists and supporters of a “Greater Israel” and adopting a regime of Jewish supremacy between Jordan and the Mediterranean.
These ideologues promise to continue reforms in the Knesset after the summer recess and attack the way government legal advisers and Supreme Court justices are appointed. They intend to seize a historic opportunity not to defeat the Palestinian enemy, who are in bad shape, but the liberal Israelis who are obstructing their ambitions.
division within the army
One of these ideologues, Moti Karpel, wrote in his 2005 review Nekouda: “Preparing again for the political struggle between right and left means preparing for the previous war.” (…) The next battle is looming on the Jewish-Israeli axis. Those who are Jews first face those who are Israelis first. (…) The Israeli vision of a state for all its citizens, with all that that means, must be opposed to the vision of a Jewish democracy. »
That word “democracy” is a fig leaf. In reality, Moti Karpel contrasted the law of God with the law of men; the power of his people to the universalist citizenship of Democrats. This struggle, which began with the evacuation of the Gaza settlements ordered by Ariel Sharon in 2005, which was traumatic for his camp, is at the forefront today.
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