AFP, published on Saturday 15 July 2023 at 22:19.
Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities on Saturday to protest a controversial plan for reforming the judicial system, which its critics see as an authoritarian tendency.
The protests, the 28th since the reform bill was published in January, come days after parliament approved a key reform measure by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most far-right in the country’s history.
The clause, passed on Tuesday, aims to remove the judiciary’s ability to rule on the “reasonableness” of government decisions.
“This is a fight for the country. We want Israel to remain democratic and dictatorial laws will not be passed here,” protester Nili Elezra, 54, told AFP.
“Things will go wrong. People are already leaving, money is lost, investors are fleeing, the world doesn’t want to talk to us, nobody is happy with what’s happening here,” she said.
In the face of fierce opposition and growing international criticism, including from US President Joe Biden, Netanyahu ordered a “dialogue pause” in March, but that failed last month.
For Elad Ziv, the next few weeks promise to be crucial: “We still have two and a half weeks until the end of the summer session of Parliament and we have to block it,” the 45-year-old programmer told AFP.
Announced shortly after the government formed by Mr Netanyahu, with the backing of far-right parties and ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, took office earlier in the year, the judicial reform aims in particular to limit the prerogatives of the Supreme Court, which the chief justice has politicized.
Critics of the reform see the risk of paving the way for anti-liberal or authoritarian tendencies.